Oral Answers to Questions

TREASURY

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—

Ethiopia (Debt Relief)

Laurence Robertson: What recent discussions he has had with other Governments on debt relief to Ethiopia.

Gordon Brown: Last month, the Governments agreed debt relief of $1.9 billion to Ethiopia, and then an additional topping up of $1.4 billion. Ethiopia is now the 13th country to reach decision point for debt relief and the 27th to be receiving debt relief.

Laurence Robertson: I thank the Chancellor for that answer, and I thank him for the work that he has done in securing debt relief for Ethiopia, on which I congratulate him. I am sure that he is aware that that country still has some $3.7 billion in outstanding debt, particularly to Russia, from the days of the bad old regime. I know that that is causing a considerable problem to Ethiopia as it tries to move towards the eradication of poverty and an increase in education and health services. Will he redouble his efforts in that direction, to secure the relief of that debt as well?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who I know is secretary of the British Ethiopia parliamentary group and has visited Ethiopia on two occasions recently. He is absolutely right: Ethiopia is a very poor country, where the average income is less than $100. Some 82 per cent. of the population live on less than $1 a day. Half of its $5.5 billion debt is owed to multilateral institutions, so the situation is difficult. There is also a specific problem because of the size of the debt owed bilaterally to Russia.
	However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that, despite the slowness of progress, Ethiopia has now received not only some debt relief, but topping up. I hope that he will also agree that the arrangements that are being made through NEPAD—the New Partnership for Africa's Development—and the Africa plan offer greater hope to Ethiopia that, if it continues to reform, tackles problems of corruption and secures stability, it can get both more debt relief and more financial help. It will be symbolic that, 20 years after Live Aid started in Ethiopia, when 7 million people still need food aid, we hope to go further and faster next year in providing resources to Africa. I may just add that that process would be helped if he could persuade his Front-Bench colleagues to support greater overseas development aid.

Julia Drown: I, too, congratulate the Chancellor on ensuring that Ethiopia and indeed Niger got their top-up debt relief. He has pointed out to the House the desperate poverty of Ethiopia and the fact that it still owes debts to many multilateral institutions. It has been calculated that it would cost UK taxpayers £3 each for the next 10 years to pay back our portion of the multilateral debt so that those in Ethiopia would not have to keep paying debts to the richer countries of the world. As Bob Geldof said in a recent meeting in this House, they cannot afford to pay it, but we can. Does the Chancellor think that that could be achieved by this country and by other countries?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who I know has been very prominent both at constituency and national level in fighting the case for debt relief not only for Ethiopia, but for countries around the world that are in need of it. A week on Friday at the G7 meeting in New York we will be discussing the possibility of deeper debt relief, which would certainly benefit countries such as Ethiopia. An extension of what is called the sunset clause would benefit countries that are still in conflict and are also desperate to be in a position to receive debt relief later.
	My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Bob Geldof highlighted the position of the country to which he first drew attention 20 years ago. Some 7 million children there do not go to school, infant mortality is high—one in six young children die—and there is only 30 per cent. literacy. Those are huge problems that must be tackled. It is not simply debt relief that is needed, but a new arrangement by which, if such countries are prepared to make the reforms, we are prepared to help them with health, education and other resources. This is a major initiative of the United Kingdom over the next few months.

Quentin Davies: Does the Chancellor agree that however desirable and attractive debt relief is from the point of view of alleviating poverty, it is justified only if it is accompanied by strict conditionality and if it is made clear that it cannot be repeated,   otherwise, a tremendous moral hazard is created and we find ourselves simply subsidising failure and perverse policies? Does he agree that, in the case of Ethiopia, part of that conditionality must be the observance of the arbitration award with Eritrea and the avoidance of further conflict, otherwise, we shall be encouraging the reconflagration of violence in that very damaged part of the world?

Gordon Brown: The debt relief and additional aid that I am talking about are certainly conditional, and I made it clear in my earlier answers that that was the case. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the signing of the memorandum of understanding with the Ethiopian Government, with clear target points for them to meet on transparency and other changes in the way in which they operate, as well as on the protection of human rights, is extremely important. That is why the additional aid that we are prepared to provide to Ethiopia is conditional on its meeting those benchmarks.
	At the same time, in relation to Eritrea, I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that there was a boundary commission report and that there are still outstanding issues, but he can be assured that the Secretary of State for International Development is making it clear that that report should be observed. We must not forget, however, that the people who suffer as a result of what is happening have no control over these events and are starving or being denied education or health care. If we can make the conditions stick, it must be in all our interests to ensure that money is provided to those people, as I think was made clear to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi at the meeting of the Africa Commission in London only last week.

Tax Credits

Claire Ward: How many families in Watford he estimates are receiving tax credits.

Gordon Brown: In January 2004, around 7,000 Watford families were receiving child or working tax credits, and I can confirm that in the UK as a whole, the figure for families benefiting from the new tax credits has now risen above 6 million, affecting 10 million children.
	Given its responsibility for tax credits, I can also tell the House that the first executive chairman of the newly merged Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise will be David Varney, who is currently chairman of mmO 2 , previously of Shell and British Gas and also chairman of Business in the Community. His remit will include implementing staff reductions of 8,000 at the Inland Revenue, of 3,000 at Customs and Excise and of 3,000 as a result of the merger. Her Majesty the Queen has approved the new department's name, which is the Inland Revenue and Customs service.

Claire Ward: Given the numbers that my right hon. Friend quoted, I am sure from my experiences in my constituency that many more families could benefit from tax credits. What can he do in his Department to encourage more families in Watford and in the rest of the country to take up their right to tax credits? Will he give an assurance that we have no plans to cut investment in tax credits, unlike Tory Front Benchers?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend reminds me that the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), said:
	"The Government needs to face-up to the fact that tax credits are not reaching the people in need."
	A record 6 million people now receive tax credits as a result of the Government's decisions. Take-up of tax credits is higher than take-up of any other benefit that the Government provide, both in Watford and across the United Kingdom. The Conservatives should think more about reversing their opposition to tax credits, which are popular across the country, including in Watford, and think less about trying to cut vital public services such as child care, Sure Start and other children's services, which are built around the successful introduction of tax credits.

George Osborne: The Chancellor should stop misrepresenting the Conservative position: we are not opposed to tax credits and never have been. Has he read the damning Public Accounts Committee report, published three weeks ago, which found that the introduction of the new tax credits in Watford and elsewhere was nothing short of disastrous, that it caused hardship for thousands of people and that overpayments could still cost the taxpayer more than £700 million a year? What is his latest estimate of the number of low-income people in Watford and elsewhere who face clawback through no fault of their own, and how much is the taxpayer currently forking out in overpayments?

Gordon Brown: Conservative party policy has been to oppose tax credits. The shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has said that they "will not work", and went on to say:
	"It is a benefit paid through the tax system . . . There is no need for a new system."
	The leader of the Conservative party said:
	"They're putting money into schemes that don't work."
	That is hardly a unanimous endorsement of the new scheme from the Conservative party.
	As far as take-up is concerned, the Labour party does not need to take lectures about the administration of taxation from the Conservative party. The child tax credit is cheaper to administer than any other benefit, and it costs half as much to administer as the family credit did under the Conservatives. The poll tax—the great tax introduced with the inspiration of the shadow Chancellor—cost £1.5 billion to administer. We will think twice about any lectures on taxation and its administration from the Conservatives.

Unemployment (East Midlands)

Judy Mallaber: If he will make a statement on levels of unemployment in (a) Amber Valley and (b) the east midlands.

Gordon Brown: The claimant count in the United Kingdom has decreased by 50 per cent. since 1997. During that period, the claimant count in Amber Valley decreased by 1,087, which is a 53 per cent. fall; and in the east midlands as a whole, it decreased by 48,000, which is a 47 per cent. fall. The claimant count for Amber Valley now stands at 2.l per cent., and for the east midlands it is 2.7 per cent.—the lowest figures for unemployment for 30 years.

Judy Mallaber: With 1.9 million more people in work since 1997, the latest east midlands business survey indicates that there are some problems in recruitment, especially for skilled workers, and that the available labour pool includes many people who are severely disadvantaged. Will my right hon. Friend therefore confirm that instead of abolishing the new deal, as the Conservatives would, we will extend it to ensure that it overcomes those barriers, to enhance skills and qualifications, and in particular will he consider how we can extend the modern apprenticeships programme to ensure that it attracts women, who are often severely under-represented in some areas of skills shortage?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She has taken a major interest in the creation of jobs and the safeguarding of industry in her constituency, and I congratulate her on that. She will agree that even though in her constituency long-term unemployment is down by 85 per cent. and youth unemployment is down by 75 per cent., there are many people who the new deal wishes to get to and to help. The new initiatives from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions are designed to help those people by giving them the chance to get jobs and to acquire the necessary skills. The future of my hon. Friend's constituency will be enhanced by the new deal for skills, more details of which will be announced next week by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
	I think that my hon. Friend will agree that abolishing the most successful employment programme in our history, which has already created 1 million jobs, and saying that it is a waste of money is a disastrous policy, but that is the policy of the Opposition. The shadow Chancellor should remember that unemployment in his constituency is now 0.9 per cent.

Mark Todd: Does the Chancellor welcome the creation of additional jobs in South Derbyshire and the east midlands through the creation of a manufacturing plant for JCB engines in the Dove Valley business park just off the A50 as a further demonstration that manufacturing is far from dead in my constituency—it is alive and thriving? Has he witnessed also the growth in employment at Toyota, which is just down the road at Burnaston?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has taken a big interest in the success and development of manufacturing in his constituency. Our aim is modern manufacturing strength. We have introduced research and development tax credits, which are available to the companies that he mentions; we have strengthened the Government's regional policy to make it possible for people to invest; and we are providing a manufacturing advisory service at a regional level. Unfortunately, every one of those services would be put at risk by the policies of the Opposition, who would not only cut the new deal but abolish all the help that we are rightly giving to manufacturing industry.

Pension Credit

Michael Jabez Foster: How many pensioners in Hastings and Rye are receiving pension credit.

Ruth Kelly: At 31 March, 5,048 pensioners in Hastings and Rye were receiving the pension credit.

Michael Jabez Foster: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. I congratulate her and the Government on the success of the pension credit in my constituency. It has made a great difference to many of my older constituents, many of whom are now more than £30 a week better off than they were under the Tory income support plan. However, does my hon. Friend share my concern that, should the Conservatives ever achieve office, their plans to abandon means-assessment would mean—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is out of order and should please sit down. It is not for the Chancellor to answer those questions, but for the Opposition. The hon. Gentleman can write to the Opposition's party headquarters to find out about these matters.

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the success of the pension credit in alleviating pensioner poverty. Indeed, if he compares the current average pensioner household with that in 1997, he will find that in real terms it is more than £1,350 better off as a result of the pension credit.

Gregory Barker: Help the Aged has described the pension credit as a "profoundly inefficient means-testing mechanism" that "is deeply flawed." How many pensioners in Hastings and Rye are entitled to that benefit but do not claim it for one reason or another? How many pensioners in Hastings and Rye have become subject to means-testing since the Government came to power in 1997? Is that why so many pensioners in Hastings and Rye feel profoundly let down by Labour?

Ruth Kelly: The hon. Gentleman's attitude is only too typical of the attitude of his party. I do not know how its Front-Bench spokesmen can claim that they are committed to tax credits while at the same time witnessing the hostility of individual Members. The proportion of pensioners now living in relative poverty is at its lowest since the mid-1980s, and is down by 0.5 million since 1996. Pensioners in Hastings and Rye, as across the country, are welcoming the introduction of the pension credit, and the poorest pensioners have benefited most.

Oliver Letwin: I hope that you will allow me to begin, Mr. Speaker, by telling you that it is now possible to reach Conservative central office on the web. There is no need to write.
	The Financial Secretary is very proud that so many pensioners in Hastings and Rye are on pension credit. Does she realise that by making those pensioners depend on means-tested benefits, instead of giving them a proper basic pension linked to earnings, she is ensuring that people in Hastings and Rye have little incentive to save?

Ruth Kelly: The right hon. Gentleman is talking absolute nonsense. For the first time in history, under the pension credit, every single pensioner in this country has an incentive to save. Those with modest savings, and small occupational pensions, will be rewarded under the pension credit.

Oliver Letwin: I do not see how a pensioner in Hastings and Rye, who is losing between 40p and 85p in the pound on savings income, has been given an incentive to save. Will the Financial Secretary tell us how many pensioners in Hastings and Rye have been affected by the Chancellor's £5 billion raid on pension funds, and how many pensioners in Hastings and Rye will suffer from his attack on the tax advantages of ISAs?

Ruth Kelly: Pensioners in Hastings and Rye are better off now than they have ever been. On average, pensioners in Hastings and Rye are £18.50 better off through the pension credit and other measures that this Government have introduced than if, for example, the basic pension had been connected to earnings. The right hon. Gentleman draws attention to the advance corporation tax reforms. He more than anyone should know that that was an example of this Government reducing corporation taxes and making sure that pensioners have resources targeted on them when they most need it.

Oliver Letwin: It is a sure sign of what is going on in the Treasury at the moment if the Financial Secretary does not have a briefing telling her the answers to simple questions about Hastings and Rye. Let us turn to another pensions disaster that will deter pensioners in Hastings and Rye from saving, putting them on pension credit: the wind-up of their occupational pension schemes. Pensioners in Hastings and Rye who are in that position will have noted the Chancellor's statement in the Red Book that unclaimed financial assets should be "reinvested in society". Would not using those unclaimed assets to compensate pensioners in Hastings and Rye whose pensions have been devastated by wind-ups be a true investment in society?

Ruth Kelly: I am not going to take lessons at the Dispatch Box from a party whose leader, when Minister with responsibility for financial services, presided over the biggest pensions mis-selling scandal in history. The Opposition talk about giving pensioners compensation when pension schemes have gone bust, yet they refused to support the Second Reading of the Pensions Bill, which for the first time in history will protect the pensioner promise awarded to pensioners. Yet again, they raise false hopes while being committed to savage cuts in public expenditure. I wonder how they would explain that to pensioners who are suffering.

Dennis Skinner: Is it not pretty evident that, when the shadow Chancellor ran away during the election campaign, he must have gone to Hastings and Rye in a blanket? That was when he was missing longer than Maxine Carr.

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman did not reappear in the Labour seat, Hasting and Rye, but somewhere else in the country, wearing a toga. My hon. Friend knows how much pensioners have benefited from the measures introduced by this Government, particularly the poorest third of pensioner households who are £1,700 a year better off in real terms, in Hastings and Rye, than they were in 1997.

Norman Lamb: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must speak about Hastings and Rye in his supplementary question, not North Norfolk, which is too far away. Can he manage that?

Norman Lamb: Thank you for that guidance, Mr. Speaker. I intend to concentrate fully on pensioners in Hastings and Rye. Will the Financial Secretary respond to the clear evidence given to the Treasury Committee by experts who said that pensioners in Hastings and Rye and elsewhere will be faced with a positive disincentive to save because of the extent of the means-testing introduced by the pension credit? Worse than that, anyone providing financial advice will clearly face the problem of mis-selling if they advise someone who is on a low or middle income on a pension product, because of the risk of losing out by not gaining the pension credit once they reach retirement age.

Ruth Kelly: I do not accept that. I think that all Governments have a duty to protect the welfare of the poorest pensioners, and it is a duty that this Government have taken seriously. Moreover, for the first time in history we can say unambiguously to every pensioner that his or her money will not be withdrawn pound for pound, and that there is a clear benefit from saving.

Child Poverty

Tony Lloyd: What assessment he has made of the impact of Government policy on child poverty.

Dawn Primarolo: By 2002–03 there were around half a million fewer children in relatively low-income households than in 1998–99—4.2 million down to 3.6 million after housing costs, and 3.1 million down to 2.6 million before housing costs. Those data do not fully reflect the effect of increased support from the introduction of the new tax credits in April 2003, or the increase in the tax credits that took effect last month.

Tony Lloyd: There is no doubt that the various schemes introduced by the Government both to assist children in the poorest families and to help adults into work have had a real impact on child poverty, but I am sure my right hon. Friend accepts that we still have a long way to go if we are to help those 3.6 million children. Are the Government still committed to the eradication of child poverty in this generation? Is that still a priority, and does my right hon. Friend agree that the biggest single threat to its achievement is the lack of national consensus and, in particular, the failure of Opposition parties to support the Government's programmes?

Dawn Primarolo: Between 1979 and 1996–97, the proportion of children living in low-income households more than doubled under the last Government. Following the introduction of this Government's policies, by 2002–03 the number of children in low-income households, in absolute terms, fell by 50 per cent.
	The Government's historic commitment to eradicating child poverty means that we must tackle poverty on all fronts. We need to ensure that we get money to families, to ensure that people can be in work, and to ensure by means of active labour market policies that that work pays adequately. We need to support parents in their parenting role, and we need to deliver high-quality public services to improve children's lives in the short term and break the cycles of deprivation. All those policies are opposed by the Conservatives in their desire to cut the new deal and cut investment in public services. It is a tragedy for the nation that we cannot secure a consensus once and for all on tackling child poverty.

Vincent Cable: I acknowledge the priority that the Government have given to child poverty and the progress made towards reducing it, but in the light of the utterly chaotic introduction of the child tax credit last year, may we have an absolute guarantee that under the even more complex regime envisaged for this year—incorporating the child supplement to income support, for instance—hundreds of thousands of poor families will not once again find themselves plunged into poverty, either through non-payment or through demands for repayment of amounts that should not have been paid in the first place?

Dawn Primarolo: It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman did not take the opportunity to commit himself fully to the policies that the Government are pursuing to eradicate child poverty. He ought to look at the details of the introduction of the tax credit. It has proved a popular policy. The contribution made by the tax credit, and by the April increase, has been fundamental to lifting children out of poverty. As has been said outside the House,
	"Following the increases in benefit and tax credit rates, severe hardship among in-work families almost vanished in two years"
	—the two years to 2001.
	That is to be celebrated. The hon. Gentleman should concentrate on ensuring that families know what they are entitled to and receive it, rather than trying to undermine their confidence in the system.

Tom Harris: I stand here as a Member of Parliament who is proud to support a Government who maintain their commitment to eliminating child poverty within our lifetime, but has my right hon. Friend thought about the way in which we calculate child poverty levels? For example, if I win the national lottery on Saturday—as I fully intend to—the increase in my income will raise the threshold for the calculation, and more children below it will be deemed to be living in poverty. Is it possible for the Government to calculate in absolute rather than relative terms?

Dawn Primarolo: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the hard work that he undertakes in his constituency and in the House in drawing attention to the particular issues around child poverty. As he will know, the Government are well on course to achieving their target of reducing child poverty by a quarter by 2004, but he is quite right to identify the challenges for the medium and long term. To that end, the Government are introducing a series of three indicators, all of which will measure our progress on eradicating child poverty: an absolute low-income test, a relative low-income test and a test of material deprivation and relative low income. They will ensure that we have clarity and comprehensiveness in tackling the questions of child poverty. That means investment in tax credits, investment in public services, support for child care, support for training and a commitment to full employment—all policies that the Conservative Opposition do not support.

Trade Agreements (Poverty)

Doug Naysmith: What steps he is taking to reach further agreements on trade in order to tackle poverty in the world's poorest countries.

Gordon Brown: Following last year's setback at Cancun, Britain and the European Union are now considering new proposals to break the deadlock on trade negotiations, not least to tackle agricultural protectionism. I hope that our proposals will have the support of Members on both sides of the House.

Doug Naysmith: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. He obviously agrees with me that a large part of the problem is due to agricultural protectionism around the world. That includes the common agricultural policy, for which we have at least some responsibility. What more can be done to effect change?

Gordon Brown: The Treasury, with the Department of Trade and Industry, will next week be publishing proposals on trade and a major study of the impact of trade on developing countries. My hon. Friend will, I think, be pleased that on 9 May the Commissioner in charge of trade, Pascal Lamy, published a letter outlining new proposals to deal with agricultural protectionism. He says in his letter that
	"we have a historical opportunity for a breakthrough . . . it is clear that the objective of eliminating all forms of export support is one which is shared by the great majority of participants."
	The European Union is moving to a position at which it will not only reduce agricultural subsidies that are trade distorting but, as part of the negotiations, remove export subsidies entirely. That is part of the pressure that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and others have been putting on the international community. I hope that everyone will welcome that.

Martin Smyth: Is the Chancellor prepared to say, apart from the advance on agricultural subsidies, whether there are any other areas in which we need to be more proactive to help world trade?

Gordon Brown: It is absolutely clear that there are two major areas on which resolution is needed in the trade talks. The first is that which we have mentioned. The developing countries will not accept the continuation of a system of agricultural protectionism, by either Europe or America, which deprives people in Africa, for example—where three quarters of the population are on the land—of being able to sell their products or, indeed, survive on the land. The second area concerns what are called the Singapore conditions, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the question of how we must break the deadlock on those. It is clear that the four Singapore conditions cannot be accepted by all countries. I believe that the European Union will now withdraw at least three of those conditions, which should help to achieve a breakthrough.
	It is in everyone's interest, when agricultural subsidies are $300 billion but overseas aid is only $50 billion, that we remove the worst of agricultural protectionism and, by changing the Singapore conditions, try to achieve a breakthrough on trade that is of the greatest benefit not to Europe and America—although they will benefit—but to the poorest countries in the world.

John McFall: The Chancellor will be aware of last year's World Trade Organisation laws on intellectual property, which encouraged countries to relax their patenting laws on generic antiretroviral drugs, so as to tackle HIV/AIDS in the world's poorest countries. Will the United Kingdom Government follow Canada's sterling example by introducing legislation, thereby helping to attain our health and development goals while respecting the intellectual property rights of the pharmaceutical industry?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend takes a huge interest in these matters, and recently visited Africa, where he will have seen at first hand the problems arising from HIV/AIDS and the failure to tackle it. I met the Finance Minister of Canada and talked to him about the announcement that Canada made only a few weeks ago about intellectual property; we shall examine his proposals. At the same time, I was able to remind him that Canada might consider the proposal that we introduced in the Finance Bill—to give research and development tax credits for companies, even those outside the United Kingdom, that are developing and patenting drugs for conditions that are peculiar or specific to, or mainly found in, Africa and other such places. We are prepared to work with Canada on those issues. The most important thing to say is that the cost of the drugs is now coming down—but we must do more, through the global health fund, to get those costs down. Again, I hope that we can have all-party support on that matter, rather than suggestions for cuts in overseas development aid.

Anne McIntosh: The Chancellor will be aware that many of the world's poorest countries are often riven with conflict; I am thinking of Afghanistan in particular. What progress is being made with his international partners in finding alternative crops to the traditional crop in such countries, the poppy?

Gordon Brown: It is clear—and we have discussed this with the Afghan Administration—that more of Afghanistan's income is coming from drugs and associated illegal activity than from any other commercial activity in the country. It is a condition of the support that we are giving that those in Afghanistan take action to destroy those crops. We shall continue to work with them to do so, but I think that the hon. Lady will understand that if we are to have any impact on the worldwide trafficking of drugs, that will demand action not simply in Afghanistan but right around the world. I know that there is all-party support for that.

Andy Reed: I welcome the progress that seems to be being made at European level, but does the Chancellor agree that we need to work more internationally, particularly with the Americans, to ensure that the trade talks are a success? Can he give any indication of the timetable? As he rightly said earlier, some 6,000 children a day are dying in Africa, and the potential uplift from just 1 per cent. growth in world trade would far outweigh all the aid programmes, the international finance facility and much else. Can we move extremely quickly, because day by day, this is an urgent problem? Can he reassure us that even if the United States is dragging its feet, Europe can move forward?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has chaired all-party committees on this subject in the House of Commons. At the last meeting of the International Monetary Fund only a few weeks ago, and at the G7 meeting, there was a declaration that there must be urgency in moving the trade talks forward. I can also tell my hon. Friend that Mr. Zoellick, the American negotiator, has been at meetings in Europe in the past few days, so that we can achieve that breakthrough. I believe that the significance of the Lamy letter on agricultural protectionism will be important in moving the talks forward, and we will do everything in our power, including the publication of our documentation next week, to move them forward. As for making more money available for Africa, I have drawn attention to what the Treasury has done to give extra support for drug research and development, and I should add that that will be carried forward by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the new service, under its new chairman. Of course, the main hope is that, subject to all the conditions that have been laid down, we can persuade our partners that an international finance facility would not simply release just a few billions more in resources, but could front-load development aid by doubling the money available to halve poverty over the next few years.

Gershon Review

Andrew Robathan: What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health regarding the efficiency review being conducted by Sir Peter Gershon.

Paul Boateng: Treasury Ministers meet their Department of Health counterparts frequently to discuss a range of issues, including the efficiency review. The Department of Health is working closely with Sir Peter Gershon and his team to maximise the benefits of the efficiency review for front-line services.

Andrew Robathan: We have just heard a lot about the Government publishing things—but the Government commissioned this report. Why have they not published it, and when will they do so?

Paul Boateng: The Government intend to ensure that in the course of the publication of the spending review, we see the results of the efficiency review in relation to each of the Departments concerned.

Geoffrey Robinson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Sir Peter Gershon's reports contain some hard targets that are difficult to meet, and will he look closely at the methods for calculating public sector efficiency and productivity? I am thinking in particular of the proposals of the Office for National Statistics, on which the Opposition have commented. Their perverse effect is such that, even if my right hon. Friend were to fan an epidemic throughout the country—I would not put such a task past his considerable powers—create a conflagration the size of the great fire of London, double class sizes and imprison half the population, he could show some remarkable increases in productivity on the basis of ONS procedures. Can we therefore hope that the reviews of Sir Peter Gershon and Sir Tony Atkinson will provide a much better basis for measuring efficiency and productivity, and put an end to the irresponsible exploitation of what are experimental figures—as the ONS itself describes them—by the Opposition?

Paul Boateng: My hon. Friend makes a very good point—in his inimitable way. He is absolutely right: the current productivity measures give a distorted picture, which is why we welcome the decision of the national statistician and Registrar General to ask Tony Atkinson to develop better measures of public sector productivity. We look forward to the involvement of Front-Bench spokespersons from all parts of the House in ensuring that we get a productivity measure on which we can agree.

Howard Flight: No tangible efficiency savings have been announced in health or education; Home Office staff numbers have grown so much that they cannot fit into the new office; the Minister for Local and Regional Government is backtracking on Gershon procurement and back-office savings; Treasury administrative costs are up by 16 per cent.; and the Prime Minister was wrong about UK administrative costs, which are up by 8.5 per cent. as a percentage of total spending. Are the Government serious about Gershon, or is the £20 billion-worth of savings just smoke and mirrors?

Paul Boateng: I recommend that the hon. Gentleman try the alternative remedy of some camomile tea. As he knows very well, there is no backtracking but an absolute commitment to maximising the benefits of the efficiency review to front-line services. That is why, not least in relation to the Department of Health, the concentration is on procurement, making better use of professionals' time and ensuring that the IT programme delivers real benefits to patients. But we all know what the hon. Gentleman really feels about public sector workers, because he shared that view with us in one of his occasional missives. He said:
	"The whole mentality in the public sector then and now is to do as little as you can."
	That is how Opposition Members view the public sector. We seek efficiency and gains for the front line; they would undermine, cut and privatise.

International Aid

David Stewart: What plans he has to increase expenditure on international aid in the coming spending round; and if he will make a statement.

Gordon Brown: UK development aid has doubled since 1997. It has risen from £2 billion to more than £4 billion, and will rise from 0.26 per cent. of gross domestic product to 0.4 per cent. by the end of the spending round. As I announced in the Budget, we will not cut aid in the new spending round, but will continue to increase the resources that we give to the poorest countries.

David Stewart: Will my right hon. Friend reassure the 700 young constituents whom I recently met at Culloden academy, Inverness, and who called for an end to child poverty throughout the world, that this Government are committed to increasing international aid and to meeting their millennium goals?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, whose interest in this issue has been shown not just in Parliament, but in the campaigns that he has run in his own constituency. I can assure him that our commitment is that every child be given the chance of primary education, and that that goal be achieved over the next 10 years, with 120 million children who do not receive education being given that education as a result of our proposals. Our commitment is to cut by two thirds child and maternal mortality, and to halve poverty over the next few years. We will do that best by the world coming together to make resources available. In our view, that will be best achieved through the international finance facility, and we are ready to talk with all our international partners about how we can tackle poverty in the poorest countries by increasing the resources that the richest countries give.

Mark Field: In addition to increasing international aid, the Chancellor will surely appreciate that it is important to target it, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. What steps has he taken to ensure that we root out corruption? Clearly, it is a major problem that much international aid goes to several war-torn sub-Saharan countries, so what steps has he taken to ensure that we target international aid money to best effect?

Gordon Brown: As I said just a few minutes ago, the protocol signed with Ethiopia made it a requirement that, before further aid would be given, the country had to sort out human rights issues, problems of corruption and the misuse of resources. Also, under measures agreed with the IMF, two centres have been set up in Africa to advise on the proper preparations of fiscal and monetary policy, which the hon. Gentleman would accept is important. It is a condition of the international finance facility and, indeed, the Monterrey consensus, that countries receive the proposed development aid only if they show that they are tackling problems of corruption, lack of transparency and those associated with fiscal and monetary stability as well as opening up to trade and investment.
	At the same time, we want to encourage the better use of aid. We should remember that aid to sub-Saharan Africa has been cut from the rate of $33 per person 20 years ago to only $20 per person today—a savage halving of aid at a time when needs have become even greater. We have not only untied aid, but, for the first time, $1 billion of aid is going directly to Africa and to the projects that the hon. Gentleman would support—in health and education.

Diana Organ: If the Government are proposing to provide future aid through the international finance facility, does my right hon. Friend agree that, in order to prevent aid flows from falling after 2015, when the millennium development goals are due to be met, the Government must make a clear commitment to reach and maintain an aid budget of 0.7 per cent. of the UK's gross national income?

Gordon Brown: I know that my hon. Friend has taken a big interest in this matter. I can reassure her that we are committed to reaching that 0.7 per cent. target. We will announce in the next spending round what we can do in the next few years. I have to tell my hon. Friend, however, that even if we reached that 0.7 per cent. target tomorrow, the amount of resources created for the international community would be about £3 billion. The additional resources created by front-loading aid under our proposals could, if the whole international community came together, amount not to £3 billion, but $50 billion.
	Given the scale of the problem and the ambition of our proposal, the best way forward is to persuade countries effectively to double their aid while at the same time subscribing to a long-term and predictable flow of aid. That is the best means by which we can encourage the poorer countries to invest where they should be investing—not in military arms, but in health, education and anti-poverty programmes.

Civil Servants (Relocation)

Paul Farrelly: What progress is being made in the transfer of Government jobs out of London and the south-east following the Lyons review.

Paul Boateng: The Lyons report gives details of Departments' relocation plans, which are being taken forward and refined as part of the spending review. The Government will come forward with detailed proposals for implementing and monitoring the dispersal plans in the review.

Paul Farrelly: I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply and I thank the Chancellor for initiating the Lyons review. Years ago in north Staffordshire, pottery owners did not want new jobs or diversification, and they opposed the opening of a car factory because they did not want to pay car workers' wages. Does my right hon. Friend agree that moving Government jobs to the regions is not just about cost-cutting or taking advantage of what is already there, but about helping regeneration, diversification and assisting areas such as north Staffordshire to be ambitious for their future?

Paul Boateng: I would certainly agree with my hon. Friend that Sir Michael Lyons's proposals and report contain real opportunities for the regeneration of his constituency, and, indeed, many others throughout the country. Sir Michael Lyons concluded that the concentration of national public sector activity in and around London was, in fact, not consistent with the objectives that my hon. Friend outlined. I am glad that he welcomes Sir Michael's report.

Andrew Mitchell: As the Chief Secretary makes clear, this important report by my constituent Sir Michael Lyons presents an unanswerable case for moving decision-makers and decisions out of London. Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that there is an enormously strong geographical and cost case for moving them to Britain's second city, Birmingham?

Paul Boateng: I am not getting into the business of selecting cities, although I might wish to assist the hon. Gentleman with his canvassing in that respect at least. However, I assure him that all Departments will put forward their proposals when making their spending review submissions. The criteria that Sir Michael Lyons's report provides will be borne in mind, and considered in the context of operational requirements. I can promise the hon. Gentleman, and all my hon. Friends, that, when we reflect on spending review submissions, we will look very hard for clear evidence that each Department has taken to heart the lessons that Sir Michael has taught us.

Louise Ellman: Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the relocation of jobs to Liverpool under the Lyons review will compensate for the threatened loss of current civil service jobs there, and that it will also address the north-south divide? How many new jobs will Liverpool receive under the plan by 2008, when it becomes European capital of culture?

Paul Boateng: My hon. Friend knows that Liverpool is already receiving a number of new jobs, by way of foreign direct investment and, as she was kind enough to acknowledge, through the award to it of the status of European capital of culture, for which I know that she and other hon. Members with Liverpool constituencies fought very hard. My hon. Friend can therefore be sure that employment in Liverpool will continue to grow. Depending on departmental requirements, the city may also receive some additional extra jobs in this relocation.

Adam Price: In his recommendations, Sir Michael says that Departments should implement their relocation plans alongside efforts to introduce locally flexible pay in the public sector, and that any failure to do so would limit efficiency gains accruing from the dispersal of jobs. Does the Chief Secretary agree with that recommendation? How far advanced are plans to introduce local pay in the public sector?

Paul Boateng: No, I do not agree with that recommendation—far from it. The Government support fair systems of pay that are backed up by tax credits and—above all—the minimum wage. The latter is something that many Opposition Members opposed tooth and nail.

Graham Stringer: The White Paper "Your Region, Your Choice" contains a fascinating table that shows the regional distribution of civil servants around England during the first four years of this Government. In that period, 2,500 extra civil service jobs were created in London, but there was a decrease in such jobs in the north-west. I am not convinced that we needed the Lyons review: if it is possible to create extra jobs in London, it should be just as possible to move officials and civil servants out of the capital. We should do that as quickly as possible, as that would benefit the overheated economy in London and the structure of the economy in the regions. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that civil servants will be moved out of London, quickly and effectively, and that some of the jobs will go to Manchester?

Paul Boateng: My hon. Friend has done more than anyone to ensure that Manchester is a magnet for jobs, in both public and private sectors. I can certainly assure him that the Lyons review provides a sound evidence base on which Departments can make the decision that we will require of them—that is, to relocate a number of their workers outside London and the south-east. That is something to which individual Secretaries of State, and the Government, are committed. I urge my hon. Friend to accept that the great value of the Lyons review is that it provides a sound evidence base for that policy.

Waste Management

Norman Baker: When he expects to publish his analysis of use of economic instruments in relation to waste generation.

John Healey: The first stage of the review of environmental and health effects of waste management was published last week. The second stage will be published shortly. Together these reports will help inform the development of policy and the much wider debate on the future of waste management. Any decisions on tax, however, will be made by the Chancellor in the usual Budget cycle.

Norman Baker: I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. I endorse the Government's waste hierarchy, with minimisation at the top, followed by reuse and recycling, and incineration and landfill beneath. Does he accept, however, that the economic signals in place do not deliver that hierarchy? Does he accept in particular that he needs to incentivise minimisation, reuse and recycling, because if he does not we will end up with a chain of incinerators up and down the country?

John Healey: No, I do not accept that the policies are not in place. They range from public spending to regulation, instruments of taxation and trading allowances, which come on stream next month. The polices are encouraging the very waste hierarchy that the hon. Gentleman talks about, which is essentially reducing the production of waste and increasing rates of recycling and reuse. Surely he must welcome the fact that the rates of recycling and composting from household waste are on target—we met the targets we set in 2002 and are expected to meet the targets we set in 2003. I would have thought that he and the whole House would welcome the efforts that are being made, especially by local authorities, which play such an important part in waste management.

Barry Sheerman: My hon. Friend will know that his comments will be welcomed by hon. Members who care about the environment. He should also be aware, however, that most of us know that the landfill tax money is building up. The Government have a rather bureaucratic response to how they disburse those moneys. Is not it nonsense, when the Environment Agency is starved of funds and cannot fully carry out its functions as a regulator, that that money is locked up somewhere in the Treasury?

John Healey: I hesitate to reply because my hon. Friend is a recognised expert on the subject in the House and well connected outside with the industry, so he speaks with a great deal of authority. However, I do not accept his argument that the increasing resources that we are putting into waste management are locked up in bureaucracy. As he well knows, because we have discussed it, we altered the landfill tax credit scheme precisely so that the money from the increase in receipts from the landfill tax would be put to more strategic use in waste management. The evidence is that that is having an effect. I also remind him that the coffers from the landfill tax are not yet swelling in the way that he suggests, but it is true that we will raise the rate of landfill tax from April next year not by £1 a tonne, which we have done in the past, but by £3 a tonne. That will play an important part in helping us to meet our targets.

Football Supporters' Trusts

Andy Burnham: What progress he has made on developing fiscal incentives to aid the growth of football supporters' trusts.

Dawn Primarolo: As announced in the 2004 Budget, under the review into the Inland Revenue treatment of football supporters' trusts announced in the 2003 pre-Budget report, the Government are currently examining how best to assist trusts in their valuable work in the local community, by maximising the benefits they receive from the contributions of their members. I know that my hon. Friend is very involved in the work of the trusts, and I thank him for his substantial contribution to the review.

Andy Burnham: I declare an interest as unpaid chair of Supporters Direct.
	I thank the Paymaster General for her reply and for the commitment that she and the Chancellor have shown to helping supporters' trusts. Does she agree that in troubled times for football, one thing that has given cause for hope in recent years is the emergence of 112 supporters' trusts in England and Wales, which are not-for-profit and democratic? They have shown that there is a better way to run football clubs than the failed public limited companies and private models. In advance of the new season, will she give supporters renewed hope by creating the real incentive of an even playing field in football that is in favour of mutual ownership?

Dawn Primarolo: Football supporters' trusts play a very valuable role in giving football fans a voice in the running of their clubs within the community, especially when clubs find themselves in financial difficulties. My hon. Friend will know that the matter is complex; the issues need to be dealt with by the Inland Revenue review and all the possibilities considered. I understand that the all-party football group has also submitted evidence. Once we have considered all those issues, we need to take them forward. I certainly concur with my hon. Friend's view that it is important to ensure that football supporters' trusts are supported and enabled to contribute to their local communities, and that the Government address how we can assist them in that task.

Petrol Prices

Alistair Carmichael: What assessment he has made of the impact of increasing petrol fuel prices on the economies of rural areas.

John Healey: When making Budget decisions, all relevant economic, social and environmental factors are of course taken into account.

Alistair Carmichael: In my constituency, we are paying at least 10p per litre, and sometimes 15p per litre, more for our petrol than people in mainland communities and that is a major barrier to the competitiveness of local businesses. Does the Minister think that is fair and, if not, what does he propose to do about it?

John Healey: We take very seriously concerns about duty levels and we are also seriously concerned about world oil prices at present. We are working through the European Union—my right hon. Friend the Chancellor raised the matter this week—and through the G7 with the OPEC nations, as they seek to lower world oil prices in a controlled and stable way. The issue is much wider than simply UK duties, but we keep those closely under review. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the normal, annual revalorisation of fuel duty announced in the Budget has been approved by the House, and I remind him that since 2000 the main duty rate for motorists and hauliers has in fact fallen by 6½p per litre.

Business of the House

Oliver Heald: Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

Peter Hain: The business for next week will be as follows:
	Monday 17 May—Opposition Day [11th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on the security situation in Iraq, followed by a debate on local government finance. Both debates are on a motion in the name of the Liberal Democrats.
	Tuesday 18 May—Progress on remaining stages of the Pensions Bill (Day One).
	Wednesday 19 May—Progress on remaining stages of the Pensions Bill (Day Two).
	Thursday 20 May—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Pensions Bill (Day Three).
	Friday 21 May—Private Members Bills.
	The provisional business for the following week will be:
	Monday 24 May—Remaining stages of the Civil Contingencies Bill.
	Tuesday 25 May—Remaining stages of the Gender Recognition Bill [Lords].
	Wednesday 26 May—Opposition Day [12th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
	Thursday 27 May—Motion on the Whitsun recess Adjournment.

Oliver Heald: I thank the Leader of the House for the business and I should like to raise two issues.
	Next week, the main business is the Pensions Bill. The all-party new clause 3 would compensate the 60,000 workers who lost their pensions after their companies went bust, and the Leader of the House knows the distress that those people have suffered. He will also know that I, my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) and Members on both sides of the House have campaigned on the issue. In fact, I led a debate on it in January 2003. According to The Times today, the Prime Minister intends to offer compensation. Can we expect a full oral statement? Will the Leader of the House comment on the very careful words that the Prime Minister used yesterday about people who had no choice about joining occupational schemes? It would be disappointing if that compensation applied only to those who had joined schemes before 1988.
	I have some further questions on the Pensions Bill. We have three days next week to consider more than 100 Government amendments to the Bill and many new clauses. Why have they not yet been tabled? How are Members to consider them properly with so little time to prepare? When will they be tabled? Tomorrow? What about all the organisations outside this place which take a particular interest in pensions issues?
	On Iraq, although it is welcome that the Liberal Democrats have half a day on the security situation, surely we need a full-day debate urgently in Government time. There are many questions unanswered. Did the Government make representations to the Americans about the rules of detention and interrogation, and if not, why not? Why was the Red Cross report with the Government for two months, but no Minister admits to being shown it? Surely, systems should be in place to ensure that an important document reaches the top, and if not, why not? Why was there no full communication between the Prime Minister, his envoy's office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence?
	There are now only 48 days left before the handover of power. We want to know whether there will be further British troop deployments. To whom will the handover be made? What powers will the Iraqis have over coalition forces? Does the Leader of the House accept that there is a lack of confidence in the Government's approach, partly because of a seeming lack of planning for the peace, partly because of the appalling revelations about the mistreatment of detainees, and also because people question the basic competence of the Government? It is important that the Government explain their position. In fact, the Foreign Secretary said as much on Tuesday:
	"I am happy . . . for there to be a debate on Iraq . . . it is important that I should come to the House and that the Government's position should be properly explained."—[Official Report, 11 May 2004; Vol. 421, c. 150.]
	When can we have a full-day debate, in Government time, on Iraq?

Peter Hain: First, on pensions, the hon. Gentleman knows that three days have been allocated to the Pensions Bill, which is a lot of time. I agree with him in respect of the ASW workers and many others like them—they have been robbed of their pensions. That is absolutely disgraceful and unacceptable. Indeed, when I was talking to many of them on Monday in Cardiff, on a visit as Secretary of State for Wales, I made it clear that I thought it was a scandal and that it ought to be dealt with.
	The Government are well aware that there is all-party concern. The relevant Cardiff MPs in respect of ASW have been campaigning consistently, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) deserves a great deal of credit for that. The Government are determined to resolve the issue in a way that does not provide a read-across to possibly billions of pounds falling on the taxpayer from other claims that do not fall into that category, where workers have been robbed of their pensions, to which they had contributed over many years—perhaps 28 years, as one worker told me on Monday. That is just unacceptable—after all, pensions are deferred wages—so we are determined to resolve the issue, and when we are ready to do so an announcement will be made. As for the hon. Gentleman's request for a full oral statement, there will be three days of debate on the Pensions Bill. There will be plenty of time in which the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Ministers can explain how the Government are proceeding on this matter.
	I understand the hon. Gentleman's point about 100 Government amendments. The Government are always anxious to provide proper time for Government amendments to be considered. This is a hugely complex issue and I am sure that he will agree that the priority is to get it absolutely right. We are responding to a number of issues that were quite properly raised in Committee, to ensure that the Bill is sound and improved.
	On Iraq, the hon. Gentleman asks for a full-day debate in Government time. There will be a half-day debate, provided by the Liberal Democrats, as I have announced, on Monday. I should have thought that that would take us further. The Secretary of State for Defence made a statement on Monday, the Minister with responsibility for the armed forces is appearing immediately after these business questions. There has also been plenty of opportunity to question Ministers on Iraq for many months.
	The hon. Gentleman refers to the handover. I am sure that he will want to support the Government and the coalition in ensuring that the handover goes as smoothly as possible, because it is absolutely critical that the Iraqi governing council is able to take whatever steps it can to establish Iraqi control and Iraqi rule over the whole of Iraq, which will lead to elections and a proper Government being established. It would be far more important and far more legitimate if the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, instead of trying to score all sorts of points, backed British forces in Iraq and backed the very difficult job that the Government are doing with our coalition partners to establish stability and security in Iraq, and to enable the Iraqis, for the very first time for a generation at least, to govern themselves free from fear and insecurity, with their democratic rights underpinned.

Brian Jenkins: Does my right hon. Friend share with many other people and me a slight suspicion that the oil companies may be operating like a cartel? The price of crude oil has risen and the price at petrol stations is a multiple of that. How can the oil companies justify their actions, as last year they enjoyed excessive profits? The only reason I can think of for increasing the price is the increased cost of transporting fuel to petrol stations. Could we have a short debate to allow the relevant Department to assess the oil companies' position and allay the suspicions that they are ripping off the British motorist?

Peter Hain: My hon. Friend has expressed concerns that are probably shared across the House. For all our constituents it is imperative that the global pressures to raise oil prices, which originate from various sources, including the enormous quantities of oil sucked in by China, do not impinge on motorists in a discriminatory way. That is the key thing. If excess profits are made as a result of that sudden hike, it is important that motorists do not bear the cost.

Paul Tyler: Reverting to Iraq, can the Leader of the House confirm that it will be a Cabinet Minister who responds to our debate on Monday so that, at long last, we can clear up the many confusions that have arisen in the House over the past few days, not least responses in Prime Minister's questions yesterday to questions from my right hon. and hon. Friends? Can we be sure that the Foreign Secretary or the Defence Secretary will respond to that debate on Monday?
	Will the Leader of the House make a statement and publish guidance on the most appropriate way of making Government announcements, a subject which you, Mr. Speaker, hold dear? It is outrageous that ministerial attitudes towards statements are becoming increasingly sloppy. For example, last night there was a tiny written statement by a junior Home Office Minister on the control of firearms and gun crime—an extremely important issue, as I am sure all Members agree. At the same time however, there was an extensive media briefing, which was not made available to Members of Parliament and could not be questioned or challenged. Indeed, that media briefing, by ruling out the possibility of a ban on imitation and replica firearms, contradicted the consultation paper, which left that as an open question to which we require answers.
	The Leader of the House may have seen comments in the press about those issues, but we have not been asked to comment and have not been given a chance to challenge Ministers. Can he give us an absolute undertaking that he will look at the issue and see whether there should be better guidance to his Government colleagues about the appropriate way of making statements to the House? Surely, we need a proper opportunity to challenge Ministers. Would he look at that again and make a statement? He is, after all, our only representative in Government, standing up for Members of Parliament, particularly Back Benchers, on such issues.

Peter Hain: I appreciate the point made by the hon. Gentleman. My ministerial role as Leader of the House is to represent the whole Commons, not just the Cabinet. I discharge that duty, as he knows, very diligently. On the question of Government announcements and guidelines that may or may not be published, we all share concern that information, particularly new information indicating a change of policy, is heard by the House before anybody else. In today's 24-hour news agenda, that is often difficult, but we try our best.
	As for the worrying issue of gun crime—on which we are seeking to bear down—the hon. Gentleman may inadvertently have misrepresented the position of Home Office Ministers. We have issued a consultation document, which has been made available to Members and others so that they can express their point of view. This is a highly complex matter—firearms legislation needs to be modernised, and the consultation document provides an opportunity to ensure that the regulatory framework is robust and prevents guns from getting into the wrong hands, while at the same time allowing legitimate shooters to pursue their sport without danger to public safety. That is what we are grappling with. The hon. Gentleman's views would be welcome, as would be those of other hon. Members.
	On Iraq, I learned only today the topic of the motion that the Liberal Democrats are tabling on Iraq, so the hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that we have not managed to allocate ministerial responsibilities, but I shall bear his point in mind.

David Winnick: It looks as though it will be a good week for our constituents with regard to pensions. Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the deep unease that continues to exist over the sickening abuses of detainees in Iraq? For someone who has not the slightest intention of apologising for supporting action to destroy Saddam's tyranny, it is alarming not only that the abuses continued to occur, but that we had little or no knowledge of them. Therefore, despite the statement earlier this week from the Defence Secretary and the debate on Monday, will my right hon. Friend please make sure that as much information as possible is given about how it was possible for such abuses to occur? I refer particularly to those committed by the Americans, who are the most guilty of all—but apparently, whether the photographs in the Daily Mirror were fake or not, abuses by British soldiers did occur. We want to know the truth, and we want to know what is being done to bring the culprits to justice.

Peter Hain: That question, coming from my hon. Friend especially, who has maintained a steadfast position in support of the Government on Iraq, deserves to be listened to closely. He makes his point well and I agree with him. Some of the reports of abuses, especially by American forces, have been not just sickening, but disgraceful and unacceptable, and in defiance of the Geneva convention and other international rules of behaviour. It is right that those abuses have been condemned by Government Ministers on both sides of the Atlantic. We are working to make sure that they do not happen on the British side, and I am sure the American Government are doing likewise in respect of their troops. On BBC television last night, I saw some reports from senators, coming out of the hearings, about the new photographs that they had seen. They are horrifying and it is a total stain on the coalition. The sooner the abuses are brought under control and eradicated, the better. Then we can move forward, as my hon. Friend said.

Roger Gale: The shambles that passes for the Government's asylum and immigration policy was exacerbated on 1 May when a significant number of people—asylum claimants from countries that are now members of the European Union—found themselves citizens of the EU. The Home Office wrote to those people in April and told them that, with effect from 1 May, their benefits would stop, their housing benefit would stop, they would have to give up their flats or houses, and they would either have to return home or seek work. What is not clear is how they are to do that if the Home Office immigration and nationality department still has their passports. How are they to prove who they are? Could the Leader of the House prevail upon the Home Secretary to come to the House and clarify the position?

Peter Hain: There is a serious point here—the problem of the worldwide movement of people on a massive and unprecedented scale, from which other countries across the rest of Europe are suffering, just as we are. We have put legislation in place—often, I might say, opposed by Conservative Members—in order to make sure that we tackle the problem. As a result, asylum applications have been halved and the number of returnees has doubled. We have got a grip on the situation. The hon. Gentleman says there is a shambles of a policy. As he uses that language, I can refer to the shambles of a policy that we inherited from the Conservative Government, which was virtually an open door to illegal asylum seeking. We have got a grip on that, we are driving it down and, in the face of the most massive movement of people across the globe, we are putting in place the measures to stop that happening. We are ensuring that only legal migration can occur.

Ann Cryer: May we have a short debate to give publicity to the fact that Bradford district, including my constituency, is piloting the extended school scheme, which will give parents, particularly single parents, the ability to work, safe in the knowledge that their children are receiving high quality child care before school, after school and during the school holidays? Those are issues that deter parents from working. The scheme will reduce child poverty in the Bradford district and it will also almost certainly be opposed by the Conservative party.

Peter Hain: I am sure that the Conservatives will oppose the scheme, not least because they could not afford it if their spending cuts plan was implemented. [Interruption.] They would have to oppose it as a result of the cuts that they plan to make immediately on coming into office—if, indeed, they ever do.
	On the substance of the question, it is important that such extended school schemes are implemented because they give parents the opportunity to work—especially those on low incomes or those going into jobs on low incomes—knowing that their children are safe and secure and continuing their studies. I was heckled on the subject of cuts; it is the shadow Chancellor's expressed programme to cut non-school budgets in education and skills.

George Young: I invite the Leader of the House to reflect on his rather dismissive response to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), who asked for a full-day's debate in Government time on Iraq. Of course we welcome a half-day Opposition debate on Monday, when two or three Opposition Back Benchers might get called, and of course we welcome the statements that have been made. But does he agree that these are no substitute for a balanced, measured full-day debate in Government time on an issue that is dominating political discussion at the moment? Will he give an undertaking that, before the end of June, the Government will provide a one-day debate in Government time on Iraq?

Peter Hain: I will certainly look at that point because I understand the concerns expressed by the right hon. Gentleman, which are probably shared across the House. The shadow Leader of the House said much the same thing on Iraq. If we judge that such a debate is the right thing to do, we will have no hesitation in having it, and his request will be noted carefully. You will agree, Mr. Speaker, that, on a variety of occasions over the past year, the Government have come forward with statements and opportunities for debate. If we judge that another is needed, we will arrange it.

Dennis Skinner: Is my right hon. Friend aware that if we get the proper amendment to the Pensions Bill next week, not only will it affect workers at ASW in Wales and Kent and at other places—including Anglo United in Bolsover—but he will not need to worry about getting additional support from the Tories in the Lobby? He can rest assured that there are enough of us on this side of the House who will give a great welcome to such an amendment because we have been fighting for one for so long, unlike the Johnny-come-latelies in the Conservative party who, were they in power, would not be able to pay for the amendment because of their cuts?

Peter Hain: I agree with my hon. Friend. The Opposition cannot have it both ways. They cannot plan for cuts in public spending while expecting to fund every particular need that exists. My hon. Friend is right; the plight of the ASW workers is disgraceful—

Dennis Skinner: And the others?

Peter Hain: I think that 60,000 are affected. Everyone in the House, including the Government, wants to deal with the problem and my hon. Friend's point has been noted. We in the Cabinet are only too well aware that there is an amendment that has a lot of support and we want to proceed on an all-party basis. To deal with the point made by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), a series of Government amendments are being tabled to the Pensions Bill today and I hope that his request will be satisfied in full.

Edward Garnier: My constituents who worked for British United Shoe Machinery will have listened with interest to the exchange that the Leader of the House has just had with the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), because they know that £500 million a year was taken out of the pensions system, thanks to the work of his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
	May we have an opportunity, in Government time, to debate the aviation White Paper? This matter has been mentioned before, and it affects my constituents because of the uncontrolled expansion of East Midlands airport. The Government seem to be demonstrating a reckless complacency about the activities of the airport, which seems to be attempting to increase by many hundredfold the numbers of flights going into and out of it. We learn about the increases by stealth. A Government Minister ought to get a grip on the issue and I urge the Leader—he has responded sympathetically to me in the past about this, for which I am grateful—to invite his colleagues from the Department for Transport to get a grip on the stealth-like expansion of East Midlands airport.

Peter Hain: I acknowledge that the hon. and learned Gentleman has raised the issue before, as he was kind enough to remind us, and he is concerned about it. The Secretary of State for Transport is well aware of his concerns, and when there is an opportunity to take forward the Government's policy on the aviation White Paper and the response to it—we are collating the responses to it, including, I hope, a response from the hon. and learned Gentleman—we will be in a position to do as he says and have a debate. On pensions, there is cross-party desire—Government and Opposition—to do something about the workers in this difficult position. [Hon. Members: "When?"] I am getting another heckle from the Back Benches. It will be done when it can be done in a way that gives proper protection to the workers, but does not expose the taxpayer to potentially billions of pounds of claims from all sorts of schemes across the board. That is the issue, and a responsible Chancellor and Government are approaching it in a responsible way, while wishing all the time to protect the rights of the workers involved.

Llew Smith: I am sure that the Leader of the House, in his other role as Secretary of State for Wales, will have read early-day motion. 1170 regarding the financing of further education in Wales.
	[That this House welcomes the record-breaking monies provided by the UK Labour Government to the Welsh Assembly; notes with concern that Welsh further education colleges are facing an estimated deficit of more than £3 million this financial year, including £660,000 for Coleg Gwent which cannot protect jobs without extra money; further notes that 45 lecturers and technicians at Coleg Gwent will be made redundant and that college departments in some of the most deprived areas will be closed and transferred to other campuses; recognises that the poor state of public transport in the area will make it difficult for students to be able to attend at other college campuses; further recognises that the situation will get much worse unless Education and Learning Wales (ELWa), which has frozen core funding provision for further education in Wales, reviews next year's budget with the aim to fund for growth in student numbers; believes that in this context the threat to access to further education in Wales is created by the Assembly and the quango, ELWa; recalls the commitment to make a bonfire of these bodies in Wales; demand the Assembly carry out this commitment; believes that the management structure of the further education colleges be reviewed and that decisions over the functions and funding of further education in Wales be taken by directly-elected representatives; and calls on the First Minister, the Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning in the National Assembly for Wales and the Secretary of State for Wales to intervene to protect jobs, courses and campuses.]
	Further education colleges are now facing a debt of £3.5 million, and my own, Coleg Gwent, has been left with a debt of £660,000 by the previous chief executive. The Leader of the House will be aware that redundancies at Coleg Gwent have just been announced and that departments have been closed and transferred to other parts of the old county of Gwent. Is it possible to have a debate on this issue? My community has the highest levels of unemployment and the most deprivation, and has lost a significant proportion of its manufacturing base in the last couple of years. It is now faced with the closure of the engineering department at its main further education college. That is unacceptable, as is the closure and transfer of other departments, such as catering, and other courses.

Peter Hain: My hon. Friend is right to raise an issue of importance to his constituency and to the whole of Gwent. He raised it with me yesterday and, as a result, I have been in touch with the National Assembly. I am astonished that the situation has occurred because the Government have been injecting hundreds of millions of pounds into further education colleges, not just in Wales but across the country. That ought to enable colleges to expand, as many are doing. In my constituency on Friday, I opened a new £6.5 million electronic learning centre, and such things are going on right across the country as we raise skills levels. It is surprising that the predicament that my hon. Friend describes has occurred.

Pete Wishart: Could we have a statement about the claims made by Martin Sixsmith in last Sunday's The Sunday Times, namely, that the Government changed the competition policy to save the Govan shipyard because they were running scared of the SNP? Is not the lesson from this that if new Labour is only prepared to take action to protect Scottish interests because of the SNP, the Scottish people should crank that pressure right up in the June European election?

Peter Hain: I understand that Mr. Sixsmith has written a novel.

Dennis Skinner: He's bought a big new house as well.

Peter Hain: I do not know about the big new house.
	I am advised that regulatory scrutiny was carried out as normal for this case and that competition policy was not reversed, as has been alleged. Remedies to competition concerns identified were obtained before the decision was made by the Secretary of State and announced in the normal way.

David Wright: Can we have a major debate in the House on Sure Start? It has recently been announced that Telford will get £8.9 million of investment in Sure Start between 2004 and 2006, but there is deep concern that the Conservatives do not support the programme and that it would be cut if they were returned to power.

Peter Hain: Sure Start programmes play a vital role, including in my hon. Friend's communities and across the country. Not only do we not want to them to be cut, which would be the result of the Opposition's policy: we want them to expand. Surely the most deprived people in the country, many of them young children in vulnerable families, should be given more and more support and investment.

Andrew Rosindell: Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State for Transport to give an urgent statement to clarify the Government's policy on the proposed Crossrail project, which is likely to have a big impact on Romford, and particularly on the people living in the Crowlands and Rush Green areas, who will be blighted by a huge depot that will be erected very close to residential areas? He will not be aware of it, but yesterday evening, the central Romford community area committee held a very large meeting, which 300 people attended. They were very angry about what is going to happen, and we hope that the Government will make a clear statement on the matter at the earliest opportunity, so that the people of my constituency know exactly where they stand.

Peter Hain: The people of the hon. Gentleman's constituency are entitled to know where they stand. Obviously, the fact that a public meeting on such a scale was held last night is an important development. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will want to note the hon. Gentleman's concerns very carefully, and his raising them in the House will ensure that that happens.

Keith Vaz: Could we have a debate as soon as possible in Government time on the Government's proposals for a new equality and human rights commission? Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry—a Minister whom I admire greatly—chose to announce the proposals at a press conference yesterday rather than by way of a statement to the House? Is he also aware of the concerns of groups such as the 1990 Trust, which believes that the abolition of the Commission for Racial Equality, which is inherent in the proposals, will marginalise the race issue?

Peter Hain: I am aware of those concerns, and my hon. Friend is certainly aware of them, but he will also understand that the objective is to mainstream equality issues, whether they are about women's equality, racial equality or equality for people with disabilities, rather than separate them. That is the objective. I understand that such change is always difficult and that when old institutions are abolished and new ones are introduced, there will always be a process of churning and uncertainty. None the less, I think that he would support the objective of getting equality and human rights mainstreamed across society, which we must all share.

Eric Forth: Now that we have winkled out of the Leader of the House the fact that the mysterious 100 amendments to the Pensions Bill are finally going to be tabled today—I suppose he thinks we are going to be cringingly grateful, but I should think we are all appalled—will he consider the impact that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) mentioned earlier? The many groups with a legitimate interest in this complex and important matter now have barely two or three days, even including the weekend, to consider their proper response to what the Government are saying, and hon. Members may also want to respond with other amendments, yet the Leader of the House is telling us that the House will be forced to consider the measure as early as next Tuesday. Will he consider postponing consideration of the Pensions Bill altogether, so that Members of Parliament and interest groups can have a proper amount of time to consider what is going on, instead of seeing it railroaded through by an obviously ashamed Government?

Peter Hain: I miss the right hon. Gentleman's rhetoric from the Front Bench, although it is enjoyable from the Back Benches. He said that the information had been "winkled out", but I was asked a question by the shadow Leader of the House and I answered it, telling him that the amendments would be tabled today. As to the claim that there is not enough time, three days have been allocated, which is a pretty well unprecedented amount for a Report stage.

Phil Woolas: They asked for two days.

Peter Hain: As my hon. Friend reminds us, the Opposition only asked for two days, but we have given them three. That does not sound like winkling out to me; it sounds like being on the front foot. I hope, by the way, that the right hon. Gentleman will support the Bill and the new pension protection fund—[Interruption.] We are asked to wait and see. Are the Opposition going to protect the pensions of workers, which were so shamefully neglected in the 1980s and 1990s? We are introducing legislation to provide that extra protection.

David Borrow: Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the Sir Nigel Crisp report on the NHS? The NHS remains very near the top of the public's agenda, and while they often praise local NHS services, they also often have a perception that the NHS generally is not doing very well. The report produced by Sir Nigel demonstrates the opposite and suggests that the NHS is doing very well indeed. Surely, such a debate would be a great advantage.

Peter Hain: Indeed. It is extremely important that Sir Nigel, who is the chief executive of the NHS, is not a politician, but a public servant—[Interruption.] He is telling it as it is, and he says clearly that things are improving and that the maximum waiting time for an operation is down to nine months—[Interruption.] That is half the level under the Conservatives, who are now heckling me. He says that things are improving all the time, with more nurses and doctors, and 167,000 more elective operations in hospital this year than last. [Interruption.] There have been year-on-year improvements, all because of record investment from this Government to improve our national health service, which was left in such a disgraceful state by the Conservatives who are now heckling me.

Angela Watkinson: In the light of today's news that a 14-year-old child was helped to have an abortion without the knowledge of her parents, will the Leader of the House make time for an urgent debate on the respective roles of parents, schools, health professionals and organisations such as the Family Planning Association in giving advice on sexual health to minors?

Peter Hain: I was very concerned to hear about that report. Obviously, it is for the authorities to act within the framework of the law and for Ministers to maintain a watchful eye on the matter, to ensure that it is resolved to the satisfaction of everybody concerned.

Andrew Miller: Will my right hon. Friend look back at the early-day motion, then—numbered 308—that was tabled on 23 June 1992? Will my right hon. Friend also look back at the speech that I made from the Opposition Benches on 12 March 1997, and then contrast what he has seen with the statement made yesterday that pension problems have arisen under this Government? Does he agree with me, and indeed with the shadow Leader of the House, that the Prime Minister should be here to make a statement on these matters—so that we can see the Leader of the Opposition squirm?

Peter Hain: I thought that the right hon. and learned Gentleman did that every Wednesday at Prime Minister's questions, but my hon. Friend's point is obviously very important, and it will repay further study.

Mark Francois: Can we have a debate in Government time on the chaos in the postal system? Many of our constituents are now receiving their mail late in the afternoon or even in the evening, and many are now receiving other people's mail rather than their own. We have had a number of debates about post office closures in recent months, but we now need to talk about this matter as well. The Post Office is owned by the Government; there are serious problems within it; and this House needs to address those problems. Will the Government now give us an opportunity to debate it?

Peter Hain: The Post Office is being turned around under this Government. Indeed, record investment is going in. I concede that the problems to which the hon. Gentleman refers are occurring on too great a scale, but I point out that Post Office staff are dedicated to improving the situation and that the Government are working with Royal Mail and supporting it in order to drive up quality. I know that the staff, including our local postmen and women, who support us all in our constituencies, want to see the problems resolved, as they are proud of the service that they offer to all of us.

John Cryer: Has my right hon. Friend seen early-day motion 1148, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) and is about the welcome progress that is being made in implementing the national service framework on the treatment of diabetes?
	[That this House welcomes progress being made in implementing the National Service Framework on diabetes and achieving the goal of improved patient outcomes and its recognition that optimal control of blood sugar, as measured by a blood test called HbAlc, can reduce the incidence of serious and costly long-term complications, and its aim that HbAlc should be maintained at or below a target level of 7 per cent.; and calls on the Government to take steps to ensure that people with diabetes are made aware of the importance of treating to target for optimal and cost-effective diabetes management.]
	Although the illness is very widespread, it is often hidden, so we need debate not only to give a voice to people who are suffering from diabetes, but to press the health service to ensure that such progress is continued and prosecuted.

Peter Hain: Indeed. My hon. Friend can obviously apply to secure a debate, and I am glad that he has drawn the House's attention to the matter. Progress towards the implementation of the national service framework for diabetes is gratifying.

Bill Wiggin: Will the Leader of the House tell us why the sitting of the Welsh Grand Committee has been moved and now coincides with Welsh questions? Why is it acceptable and good management that the Pensions Bill will be debated for three days, after which time ASW workers will still not know what the future holds?

Peter Hain: The Welsh Grand Committee does not coincide with Welsh questions and will be on a different day—it was moved from the original day at the request of the leader of Plaid Cymru. [Interruption.] We will debate the Pensions Bill, which is very important, for three days. We are rescuing pensioners from the shambles into which the Conservative Government plunged them during the 1980s and 1990s. I hope that the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Wiggin) supports the Government's new protection policies for pensioners, because pensioners deserve protection given that pensions are uncertain, right across the globe.

David Cairns: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 1070, which outlines the dismal failings of Inverclyde council in the first 12 months of Liberal Democrat control?
	[That this House notes that 1st May marks the first anniversary of the election of a Liberal Democrat Council in Inverclyde; further notes that in the past 12 months the council has systematically broken most of its election pledges, including those to keep open Wellington Academy, to find alternative funding for new schools, to deny tenants a vote on the future of council housing and to oppose salary increases for council officers; condemns their decision to cut school clothing grants to poor families, reduce funding to vital community groups and close public toilets; expresses astonishment that Liberal councillors now publicly admit that they did not think through the implications of their decisions to cut services while stashing millions of pounds away in a war chest; and regrets the combination of incompetence and arrogance that have become the hallmark of the council leadership, while letting down the people of Inverclyde.]
	Since I tabled early-day motion 1070, the leader of the council has said that it is "ludicrous" to bring the issue to the House of Commons. Will the Leader of the House confirm that it is not only the right of Members of Parliament to raise such issues, but their duty? I would fail in my duty to my constituents if I did not point out the broken promises, incompetence and haemorrhaging of senior officers that has taken place in Inverclyde since the Liberal Democrats took over.

Peter Hain: As Leader of the House, I can confirm that my hon. Friend is quite within his rights to raise those matters. Indeed, most hon. Members would agree that it is probably his duty to raise them, because we are all entitled to raise local constituency matters, if, like him, we are on the Back Benches. From what he has said, the leader of the council is out of order in seeking to muzzle him. I would have thought that his constituents want him to speak up for them, which he is doing.

Adrian Flook: The Royal Marines of 40 Commando based in Taunton are currently preparing to return to Iraq—the last time they were there, they bravely liberated Basra. The Leader of the House may not know—although the Secretary of State for Defence will—that the return is earlier than planned. Will he ask the Secretary of State for Defence to come to this House sooner rather than later to confirm whether the Marines are replacing or supplementing existing troops?

Peter Hain: The Royal Marines of 40 Commando have, as the hon. Gentleman says, given distinguished service, and we are grateful to them given the difficult circumstances in Iraq. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, will address the House after me, when the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to raise the matter.

Julie Morgan: Will my right hon. Friend urge the Government to make a statement as soon as possible about ASW pensions? Many ASW workers are from Cardiff, and I was pleased when he spoke to them earlier in the week. Does he agree that next week's announcement of a pension protection fund is a result of the campaign by ASW workers and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), who has led the campaign in this House? All those who have paid into a pension fund should benefit from the Government proposals. Will my right hon. Friend do his utmost to see that that happens?

Peter Hain: First, I should make it clear that we have an hour of other business before the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence gets to his feet.
	I applaud the campaign by the ASW workers in Cardiff, and the role that my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) and for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) have played in championing their cause. Their persistence has ensured that we have left no stone unturned in seeking to resolve the problem satisfactorily, which we are determined to do if we can.

Martin Smyth: Will the Leader of the House have a chat with the Minister for Pensions on behalf of workers at Richardsons Fertilisers? When the Richardsons Fertilisers pension scheme was transferred, it was fully funded. The Dublin Government will fund the pensions of workers for firms in the Republic of Ireland that were linked to Richardsons Fertilisers, which leaves the Richardsons Fertilisers workers completely isolated. Will the Leader of the House examine the situation to see whether equity can prevail?

Peter Hain: We all want equity to prevail, and the hon. Gentleman is right to call for it. The Minister concerned will want to study what the hon. Gentleman said very carefully.

Brian Iddon: I declare an interest as the unremunerated patron of the Society of Registration Officers. Following last year's publication of "Civil Registration: Delivering Vital Change", which received a massive 3,400 responses, the Government are about to lay two regulatory reform orders before Parliament, which will result in the most radical changes to civil registration services since the 1830s. About a year ago, I asked my right hon. Friend to arrange a debate on civil registration services. That request was unsuccessful, so I repeat it today.

Peter Hain: I am aware of my hon. Friend's role and that he secured a debate on the subject last June—he has been successful in securing debates on the subject since 1997, which it is proper for him to do. I note his request, but the Financial Secretary announced at the end of March that the Government will introduce the regulatory reform orders this side of the recess. When the orders have been laid, the Regulatory Reform Committee will consider them, and my hon. Friend might like to make representations to the Chairman of the Committee.

Desmond Swayne: Can we have a debate on the Amnesty International report? I remember the tragic events on 21 August last year, when a young girl was killed, presumably by a stray round fired by one of our soldiers as a warning shot over the heads of rioting villagers. We are now being asked to believe that three of our soldiers got out of a Warrior vehicle, stood around until a crowd of children gathered, and then wantonly and deliberately killed one of them. That sort of nonsense must be exposed, and I suggest that a full debate is the way to do it. And notwithstanding what the Leader of the House said to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) earlier and what the Prime Minister said yesterday, Conservative Members do not need lectures about supporting our troops in Iraq.

Peter Hain: Nobody has given more support to our troops in Iraq than the hon. Gentleman, since he was one of them. On the incident that he describes, I tend to share his view. Two Ministers, the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence and the Secretary of State for Defence, have already made statements on the Red Cross report. This afternoon's debate is an opportunity to question the Minister of State, and the hon. Gentleman can undoubtedly take advantage of it.

Clive Betts: On Tuesday, the Housing Bill was on Report, where I raised the point that, given that the Government are regulating the buying and selling of houses through the home information pack, it is illogical not to regulate the people who are central to that process, namely estate agents. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning said that the Government are considering an Office of Fair Trading report and will deal with the potential licensing of estate agents. Will the Leader of the House assure me that when the Government have considered the OFT report, they will bring that important matter back to the House for full debate, consideration and decision? Buying and selling homes is one of the most important activities that millions of people perform each year, and many of those people will have been alarmed and concerned by the exposure of the worst estate agents' practices undertaken by the Consumers Association and the BBC. The matter is important, and I hope that the Leader of the House will bring it back to the House for full consideration.

Peter Hain: My hon. Friend's points will certainly be considered, because they are important, and he is right that the buying and selling of homes affects millions of families across the country. Those families want to know that their rights are being protected, which is precisely what the Government seek to do, and we will draw on the OFT report in order to do that.

David Cameron: May I join the calls from both sides of the House for a full day's debate in Government time on Iraq and the Red Cross report? We now know for certain that no Minister saw the report for almost three months, which makes the matter even more important. Given the passionate and, I believe, entirely correct answer that the Leader of the House gave to the hon. Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick), does he think that Ministers should have seen the report earlier?

Peter Hain: This matter has been dealt with by the Defence Secretary, by the Prime Minister and by others. I can only repeat what I have already said to the shadow Leader of the House and others: if there is a case and an opportunity for a full day's debate, there will be one. We have not been shy in coming to the Dispatch Box to answer questions on Iraq; indeed, the Defence Secretary did so on Monday and the Prime Minister did so yesterday. We are fully accountable on these matters, as we will continue to be.

Tom Harris: Can my right hon. Friend tell the House how easy he finds it to locate a reliable, well trained plumber; and can we have a debate on the Floor of the House that will contrast this Government's support for the modern apprenticeship scheme with the failure of the previous Government adequately to train up a new generation of plumbers, joiners and electricians?

Peter Hain: I find it relatively straightforward to find a good, well qualified plumber in Neath, but much more difficult in London. I imagine that that has been my hon. Friend's experience. That is one of the many reasons why we have massively increased the number of apprenticeships from the 75,800 that there were under the Conservative Government when we came into power in 1997 to 255,500—the most ever. We are creating on-the-job learning at school through the young apprentice scheme, which combines traditional school studies with up to two days per week learning on the job alongside skilled workers, including plumbers. I am sure that many more plumbers will come through that scheme. Our abolition of the 25-years-old age cap for apprenticeships should provide further encouragement.
	I remember being told last year by a woman involved in training schemes that she found it impossible to encourage young girls to become plumbers, because they all wanted to be hairdressers, even though they could earn perhaps four times as much while training for plumbing and have a much more flexible and well remunerated career afterwards. We want to see not only more men plumbers, but more women plumbers.

Mark Field: Sport is very close to the hearts of many millions of our fellow countrymen. Will the Leader of the House give serious consideration to ensuring that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport comes to the House to lead a debate in Government time on sporting strategy? I am particularly concerned about two issues. First, we should consider the strategy for the London Olympics, assuming that we make the shortlist following next week's decision by the International Olympic Committee. Secondly, there are grave concerns about the English cricket team's proposed tour in Zimbabwe in the autumn. I know that that matter is close to the right hon. Gentleman's heart, given his record as an erstwhile agitator some 34 years ago, and I should be interested to hear his views.

Peter Hain: I have made my views very clear. In the unlikely event that I were an English cricketer, I would not go. Since the Zimbabwe cricket authorities now stand charged with discriminating in the selection of the team, this becomes a sporting matter as well as a question of the oppression under Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
	I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of sport. I am a sports fan myself—a Chelsea supporter and a Neath rugby supporter, among other things—and if there is an opportunity for a debate, I am sure that we will get one.

Points of Order

Oliver Heald: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is currently making an announcement about the fallen stock scheme, which is a major scheme for farmers. There is no written or oral statement on the Order Paper, yet this is a matter of great importance. I understand that it might be a bit embarrassing for the Government, because 180 out of 250 collection centres for fallen stock will be at hunt kennels. Would you be prepared to investigate how it is that this discourtesy to the House has occurred?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair. The hon. Gentleman should get involved in some correspondence with the appropriate Minister.

David Wilshire: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise for not discussing this with you earlier, but it took until a few minutes ago to double-check the facts that I want to raise.
	During yesterday's Second Reading debate on the Age-Related Payments Bill, I pointed out that Spelthorne borough council's council tax payers had to meet part of the cost of operating the Government's council tax benefit scheme. The details of what I said are at column 388 of Hansard. During his winding-up speech, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) said this about my claim of underfunding:
	"I must ask my officials to contact his council because he appears to believe that the local authority meets part of the cost of council tax benefit when the central Government subsidy finances all properly made payments of such benefit."—[Official Report, 12 May 2004; Vol. 421, c. 408.]
	Clearly, that is contrary to the information that was given to me by Spelthorne borough council. It follows, Mr. Speaker, that either I or the Minister misled the House. I therefore double-checked the council's claim this morning. It insists that it is telling the truth and has confirmed in writing the figures that I gave the House yesterday—namely, that the administration grant from the Government for 2003–04 was £144,762, while the actual cost of administration, using the Government's system for calculating it, was £313,276.
	It would therefore appear, Mr. Speaker, that what the Minister said in yesterday's debate was incorrect. Can you confirm that he should now come to this House to apologise for making that incorrect statement?

Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his point of order. I am sure that he is not seeking to accuse a Minister of deliberately misleading the House. If he were, that would be a matter of privilege that should be raised with me in writing. As it is, it seems to be a disagreement about a matter of fact, which is not for me to resolve. The hon. Gentleman should pursue the point directly with the Minister, either by correspondence or by tabling a question.

Eric Forth: Further to the point of order made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), Mr. Speaker. As you know, you have frequently deprecated the habit of Ministers making statements and giving press conferences outside this House on matters that we, and I think you, judge would be much more appropriately dealt with here, where the Minister could be properly questioned by Members of Parliament. You have rightly said that that is not directly a matter for you, but could you confirm that were we to become aware in the early part of the day that a Minister was planning to issue a statement or to hold a press conference outside the House, procedures are available—SO24s and Urgent Questions occur to me immediately—whereby we, through you principally, could insist that the Minister came to the House and stated or repeated here what he had said outside the House so that he could be properly questioned?
	In other words, Mr. Speaker, Ministers should not assume that they can get away with this, and that, although you deprecate it, they can flout what you say. Procedures are available whereby they could be brought to the House in order to emphasise the fact that this is where their first responsibility lies.

Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. From time to time, I have had to bring Ministers here to the Dispatch Box, and I have enjoyed doing it. Of course, I keep this matter under review. The House is sitting tomorrow and, as the right hon. Gentleman points out, there are procedures to deal with these matters.

Child Trust Funds Bill (Programme) (No. 3)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Orders [28 June 2001 and 6 November 2003],
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Child Trust Funds Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 15th December 2003 (Child Trust Funds Bill (Programme))—
	Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.
	Subsequent stages
	2. Any further message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question put.
	3. The proceedings on any further message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—[Mr. Ainger.]
	The House divided: Ayes 247, Noes 120.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Orders of the Day
	 — 
	Child Trust Funds Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I inform the House that privilege is involved in Lords amendment No. 7. If the House agrees to the amendment, I will arrange for the necessary entry to be made in the Journal.

Clause 1
	 — 
	Child Trust Funds

Lords amendment: No. 1.

Ruth Kelly: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, we may take Lords amendment No. 2.

Ruth Kelly: Looked-after children include some of the most disadvantaged children in our society, and we are committed to ensuring that they are fully included in the child trust fund arrangements. Although the majority of looked-after children have someone with parental responsibility, some have no one with such responsibility who can give instructions on their behalf for their child trust fund accounts—for example, orphans with no legal guardians. There are also some circumstances in which it would be inappropriate for someone with parental responsibility to give instructions for the management of a child trust fund account of a looked-after child—for instance, when contact between a child and a parent had been terminated because of serious abuse.
	I said in Committee in January that we were exploring the possibility of involving the Official Solicitor. The amendments are the result of that work. Without them, there would be no one to give new instructions to the account provider for child trust fund accounts until the children reached the age of 16, when they would be able to give instructions themselves. There are a number of good reasons why it is desirable to have someone who could do that, and could make relevant decisions. For example, a child's religious or ethical beliefs may not accord with the type of child trust fund account that he or she has, or with the type of investments used in the account. Alternatively, an account provider may be underperforming in investment terms compared with other providers, so a move to a different provider may be called for.
	The amendments would allow the Official Solicitor to be appointed to manage the child trust fund accounts of such children. I urge the House to support them.

George Osborne: It is good to be back at the Dispatch Box talking about this Bill—it brings back memories of cold, dark January days in Committee.
	Before I deal with the detail of the amendments, I want to say something about timing, in which I think the Official Solicitor would also be interested. I hope that today will mark the Bill's last legislative hurdle—we must wait and see—but one major piece of the jigsaw is missing: a piece that is relevant to the Official Solicitor, and the new responsibilities that the Government want to give him or perhaps, in the future, her. It is, however, of greater interest to the providers. I have spoken to some of them in the past week, including the chief executive of one of the largest likely providers. What concerns them, and may concern the Official Solicitor, is the sales regime for child trust funds. That is the last major piece of the jigsaw.
	We, and the providers, were told that the Financial Services Authority's consultation paper on the sales regime was due to be published by the end of April. This is the second delayed deadline since the end of last year. We are almost halfway through May, and there is still no sign of the paper. When does the Financial Secretary expect it to emerge? Will it have to go to her before being published? I am not sure what procedure will apply in her office.
	Will the Financial Secretary confirm that when the paper is published, there will be a mandatory three-month consultation period in which people, perhaps including the Official Solicitor, will be able to make representations? If so, even if the paper were published this week, the consultation period would run until mid-August. That makes it extremely unlikely—and I am being generous here—that a decision on the sales regime would be made until the end of September. We are therefore very close to the deadline for getting the scheme up and running. The providers must start registering with the Inland Revenue by October or November, and from January they need to be in a position to accept applications from children born between September 2002 and April 2005.
	That is a tight deadline. It was tight when we were discussing this in Committee and on Report, but it is even tighter now, and we still do not have the sales regime. That is causing considerable concern in the industry, and is relevant to the Official Solicitor's responsibilities. When I spoke to the Association of British Insurers this week, I was told:
	"The lack of information on the sales regime hinders providers' ability to take an informed decision on market entry—for example, we don't know if the CTF will be covered by the Sandler sales process or not. Early announcement of the charge cap which will apply to the CTF was welcome, but without the details of the sales regime providers will have an incomplete picture with which to consider offering the CTF . . . the timing of the publication of information on the sales regime is, at the very least, unfortunate."
	The ABI is one of the most important groups representing the financial services industry, and is obviously important to the success of child trust funds. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, the official Opposition have supported the Bill throughout its passage so far, and we want child trust funds to work; but we are becoming increasingly concerned about the tightness of the timetable. When we read in the press that large providers such as the Pru and Legal and General have decided not to offer child trust funds, it is clear that we must do all we can to make them as attractive as possible to other providers, given the Government's restrictive decisions on such matters as the charge cap. The sales regime will be crucial to that. Will it be complicated or straightforward? I hope the Financial Secretary will say something about it, because I think it will be of broader interest.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but we must try to keep the debate within the confines of the amendments. I hope he will not seek to persuade the Financial Secretary to respond to a broad Second Reading-type debate.

George Osborne: I would not dream of doing so, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	I am sure that the Official Solicitor, Mr Laurence Oates, will follow our proceedings, because he will have to make some of these decisions. The Financial Secretary talked about his role in Committee, or at least hinted at it. In fact, it was a bit confusing at the time. As the Financial Secretary knows, I have a great deal of time for her. We have just been sparring against the big beasts of the political jungle together during Treasury questions—her against my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), the shadow Chancellor, and me against the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In Committee, however, she kept referring to the Solicitor-General rather than the Official Solicitor. Mr. Laurence Oates is not, as far as I am aware, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and I doubt that either he or she would have been too impressed. But I shall put that slip to one side.
	In Committee, the Financial Secretary said she was considering giving the Official Solicitor some kind of role to act on behalf of children in care. Will she expand on that a little? In her speech today, she did no more touch on what may be a very significant issue, with which I shall deal in a moment.
	Will the Official Solicitor be able to act in the circumstances suggested by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) in the debate in Committee? Those of us who served on the Committee will remember his rather lengthy dissertation on the performance of the Japanese equity market.

David Laws: It was concise.

George Osborne: That depends on the definition of "lengthy" and "concise". It might have been concise by the hon. Gentleman's standards, but it was lengthy by everyone else's.
	The hon. Gentleman made the serious point that in future equities could seriously underperform because of a crisis or prolonged slump in the equity market. Under the Bill as drafted, some children in care for whom the Official Solicitor will be acting will be forced into having an equity-based child trust fund account—a stakeholder account. We also discussed that in Committee. The hon. Member for Yeovil asked who, in circumstances in which there had been a prolonged equity slump, would decide on behalf of those children in care that it would be a mistake to go on using equity accounts. At a time when every other child in the country would be going into other accounts, such as cash accounts, because their parents would be sensibly making the decision not to put their child's future nest egg into the equity market, children in care, who, as the Financial Secretary said, are among the most vulnerable in our society and often have the smallest financial assets, would continue to be pumped into those equity accounts.
	Will the Official Solicitor be able to make a broad decision that, at some future point, all the children in care whom he is looking after will no longer have to have an equity-based child trust fund? That will be a huge decision for him to take, and that raises the question of whether Mr. Laurence Oates is qualified to make it. He is no doubt an extremely well qualified lawyer, but he is not a financial adviser. On what grounds is he qualified to make an investment decision on whether the account of a child in care is best invested in the equity market or the bond market? The Official Solicitor is not in a position to make a qualified judgment on that.
	That brings me to a point that the Financial Secretary made in her brief remarks. She put to the House the possibility that there might be an underperforming account provider and that children would not therefore have their child trust fund accounts placed with that provider. Again, I am not sure whether the Official Solicitor is in a position to make a judgment on whether an account provider is underperforming. Who will decide that? Will it be the Official Solicitor's responsibility to gather information from all the various financial providers and then decide that because a certain provider is underperforming, he will not allow any child trust funds of children in care to be placed with it? On what grounds can he take that decision? He is not a financial adviser and does not have financial expertise. Will the Inland Revenue take the decision and make a recommendation to the Official Solicitor? Will the Official Solicitor then be required to accept that recommendation, or will he make a judgment on the Revenue's advice? The issues are complex, and if we are going to give the Official Solicitor this important role, we need more clarification than we have so far had on exactly what role he will have in those decisions.
	Will the Official Solicitor have the power to remove accounts, or to decide not to place child trust funds with a particular provider? I remember from our discussions in Committee that the child trust funds for children in care will be allocated to providers on a rota basis. If a provider is underperforming, will it be taken off the rota, or will it still be awarded the account, only for the Official Solicitor almost immediately to remove the account from the provider?
	Those are important decisions, and I do not think that the Government have offered a convincing explanation on them. When I looked at the House of Lords Hansard, I read that Lord MacIntosh of Haringey was even briefer than the Financial Secretary in his explanation. He merely said that the Official Solicitor could
	"give instructions . . . regarding a child's trust fund account"—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. GC176.]
	in situations where it was deemed "necessary or desirable". There was no explanation of what exactly necessary or desirable meant.
	Amendment No. 2 says that the Official Solicitor can act only for children under 16. Of course, the fact that children aged 16 and 17 are going to be able to manage their accounts is my single biggest achievement since becoming a Member of Parliament. I persuaded the Government to change their mind on that, so I am not going to suggest that they undo their fine work. I will go to my grave knowing that I have changed the course of our nation. However, many children in care are there because they have, unfortunately, disabilities—some physical, but others mental. It is not clear to me that every child of 16 with mental disabilities will be able to manage their child trust fund account, and that is more likely to be the case for some of the young people whom the Official Solicitor represents. What will be the position of such 16 and 17-year-olds, where the person acting for them is not a parent or relative, but the Official Solicitor? Will there be circumstances in which he will continue to manage the account when a child is 16 and 17, to make sure that they get the benefit of a child trust fund account at 18?
	It seems strange that that age has been written into the legislation, with no explanation of what will happen. I suppose that that also applies to some children who are not being looked after by the Official Solicitor. Since the Government changed their mind on reducing the age from 18 to 16 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, I have not seen what they propose to do with 16 and 17-year-olds who are not capable of managing their own accounts, or who they intend will act on behalf of those young people. However, that is of particular relevance to this debate because of the role of the Official Solicitor in the matter.

David Laws: I share the pleasure of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) at getting back to the details of the Child Trust Funds Bill, which are almost fun in comparison with the Finance Bill that we are dealing with in Committee.
	Of all the groups of amendments that we are debating today, this is the most important. I hope that you will therefore bear with me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, while I set out some of our concerns about the Government's amendments and their legislation in this area.
	As the hon. Member for Tatton made clear, this was a major issue for debate in Committee. It was clear that the Government wanted, correctly and understandably, to ensure that children in care had access to child trust fund accounts and the Minister wanted to ensure that the accounts of children in care had as much upside potential in terms of asset growth as those of individuals not in care. However, we raised in Committee the question of what would happen if the moneys invested by the Government in the accounts of children in care were put into equity-based products, as appears to be their intention. What would happen if the equity market was performing extremely poorly, in a way to which parents might respond by withdrawing money from equity-based accounts and putting it into cash or bond accounts? Children who have their accounts managed by the Government acting in loco parentis might lose out and, in future, hold the Government to account for the poor performance of their investment.
	The hon. Member for Tatton mentioned what I thought was rather a concise summary that I gave in Committee of the experience in other countries, including Japan, that have had long-term bear markets. It may be difficult to anticipate that happening in the current circumstances in the United Kingdom, where we are used to the stock market and equity prices rising over a long time, but even several months after we debated this issue, the stock indices in Japan are still around the 10,000 mark—almost as little as 25 per cent. of what they were. In other words, there has been a 70 to 75 per cent. decline in the Japanese stock market since 1987–88, when I left university, and that could happen in the United Kingdom.
	No doubt the Minister could not envisage that happening on her watch, or that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I imagine that even she could envisage it happening if a Conservative Government came back to power. Perhaps she can imagine a long-term bear market at that stage that would raise exactly the concerns that the hon. Member for Tatton described, with the Government merrily putting money into equity-based child trust fund accounts on behalf of children in care, but then discovering that those accounts were going down dramatically in value.
	The question, therefore—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman sought my indulgence while he sketched the background to his remarks, but I have to tell him that, based on what I am now hearing, my indulgence is beginning to drain away.

David Laws: Then I have come to exactly the right point in my comments, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I am now going to talk about the way in which the Government have sought to deal with the problem.
	Initially, the Financial Secretary was unwilling to acknowledge that there was a problem. We had some fun in Committee, perhaps at my expense, with some of the points that I have just made. However, on 13 January she showed that she might be beginning to understand our concerns. She said:
	"There are some quite difficult issues to resolve. We have been in consultation across Government about the best way to provide for children in care. I am determined to ensure that children in care have the maximum opportunity that we can offer them through this policy." —[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 13 January 2004; c. 100.]
	She also undertook later in the debate to engage with the Official Solicitor and others to seek to clarify the Government's policy and deal with the risk of children in care being disadvantaged.
	There was a further modest development of the policy on the Floor of the House on 3 February when the Financial Secretary said:
	"We have not yet finalised the possible role of the Official Solicitor, with whom we are still negotiating, but I can confirm that we have discussed the need for the Official Solicitor to consider whether the account was performing poorly".
	That was a major breakthrough in the Government's policy. She went on to say:
	"The hon. Gentleman's concerns about an equity market slump or liquidity crisis that have driven him to make his many and varied comments would be the sorts of concerns that the Official Solicitor, if they were to accept that role, should consider".—[Official Report, 3 February 2004; Vol. 417, c. 713.]
	The hon. Member for Tatton went on to refer to comments made in another place on 18 March, when Lord McIntosh spent what looks like less than a minute explaining the policy that led to the Lords amendments being tabled. He summed up by saying:
	"I hope the Committee will feel that this is an uncontroversial addition to the existing provisions".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. GC176.]
	There seemed to be no debate on the issue, which is a pity.
	This may be an uncontroversial move by the Government in the sense that they are trying to deal with the problems that we discussed in Committee, but as the hon. Member for Tatton said, there are some major questions about whether their well-meaning intentions in tabling the amendments have been properly thought through. We need answers to a number of questions from the Financial Secretary and I hope that she will be able to give them today.
	I shall run through some of the major questions that arise from the suggestion that the Official Solicitor—who, so far as I am aware, has no particular market expertise—will act as some kind of investment adviser, presumably unpaid, to children in care for whom the Government act in loco parentis.
	First, will the Official Solicitor have the option of opening accounts that are not equity-based, such as cash-based accounts? The Minister has said in Committee and elsewhere that she wants all the accounts for children in care to be equity-based stakeholder accounts. I understand her desire to ensure that children in care can benefit from any buoyancy in the stock market compared with cash-based accounts or bond-based markets, but does she acknowledge that, in some circumstances, the Official Solicitor might not want to open equity-based stakeholder accounts, but cash or bond-based accounts instead? Will that be possible?
	Secondly, will the Official Solicitor be able to move money out of equity-based accounts that have been opened for children and put it in cash accounts if he thinks that that would be sensible in the prevailing market conditions? Will he be able to do that the other way round and turn a cash-based account into an equity-based one?
	How will the Official Solicitor make those judgments? In my earlier career, I worked in the financial markets for quite a long time. I can tell the Minister that, when markets go down a long way, it is easy for people to panic and, having believed that markets were about to reverse themselves, eventually change their minds—often at the lowest point of the market—and switch into other assets, only to discover that the market then goes back up.
	How will the Official Solicitor make judgments about market conditions and investment rates and how will he assess the performance of the accounts that he is considering switching in and out of? Will he be advised by some other body within Government, the Financial Services Authority, the Treasury, or some other organisation, before making those important decisions?
	What legal recourse will there be for children whose accounts are managed in that way if the Official Solicitor gets it wrong? What will happen at the age of 18, or even 16, when a child looks back on the experience of having his or her account managed by the Official Solicitor, only to discover that, every time the equity markets plunged, he had worried terribly that he would be criticised for inactivity and had switched all the money out of equity into bonds at the low point in the market, that the market had then rallied, the Official Solicitor had switched into gilts and that gilts then declined? The Official Solicitor is not necessarily financially trained and one can imagine that he could make an utter hash of the job. What would stop the children involved seeking legal recourse for the losses that they had sustained?
	Will there be any restriction on the Official Solicitor's freedom to move money in and out of accounts, or will his powers be as strong or as weak as those of a parent managing their own children's trust fund accounts? In other words, will the Official Solicitor act fully in loco parentis or will he be restricted in comparison with parents? Is there a memorandum of understanding between the Official Solicitor and the Treasury, setting out the terms on which the Official Solicitor will take such difficult decisions? If so, will it be published so that we can see the terms and put pressure on the Government to change them if they are wrong?
	Finally, as the hon. Member for Tatton asked, what are the implications of the fact that the Official Solicitor can, essentially, pull the plug on a financial provider that appears to be doing a bad job with its investment accounts? What are the implications of the Official Solicitor moving—presumably all—the accounts in the name of that financial provider out of the provider's name and into that of another? Presumably, if there were concerns about how a particular provider was managing such accounts, the Official Solicitor might move a whole swathe of accounts at the same time. What signal would that send to the financial markets about that provider's competence? In those circumstances, would it not be very difficult for the Official Solicitor to take such action? He or she would be regarded as almost censuring a financial market body as a consequence of its incompetence. Essentially, that would amount to a vote of no confidence in that provider.

George Osborne: The hon. Gentleman is developing a crucial point. Has he considered the possibility whereby the Inland Revenue thinks that the provider is up to the job and continues to award child trust funds to it, but the Official Solicitor takes the view that it is not up to the job? That would lead to real confusion.

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman is right and highlights another risk that needs to be debated and considered carefully, in the Government's own interests, before such legislation and regulations are finalised.
	I hope that the Financial Secretary does not feel that I am being ungrateful. I appreciate that the amendments are a step towards addressing the concerns that we raised in Committee, but we are sceptical as to whether the Official Solicitor can do the job alone. The Government are placing too much responsibility on the Official Solicitor in respect of areas in which he or she might not be competent. We want to be reassured that the Official Solicitor will not be expected to do this job alone. At the very least, the FSA, Her Majesty's Treasury or some other part of government must surely have a role to play in advising the Official Solicitor. I hope that we hear from the Government on that point and that we can engage constructively with them in the months to come to ensure that we get this right. Although they now understand the problems and have introduced amendments in an effort to address them, they have yet to find the right solutions.

Michael Weir: I have a strange feeling of déjà vu, in that this debate sounds very much like the one that took place in Committee on this very issue. As I recall, the exposition of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) at one point touched on William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution, although that may have been part of some horrible nightmare.

George Osborne: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the big difference between today's debate and that in Committee is that the Government now agree with what the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) is saying? When we discussed this issue in Committee, the Financial Secretary did not agree.

Michael Weir: That is a fair point; indeed, there has been considerable movement on the part of the Government.
	Despite what I said about the similarity of the two debates, I do agree with many of the observations made by the hon. Member for Yeovil. I should point out that I have no experience whatever of the work of the Official Solicitor, but before being elected to this place I was a practising solicitor, so I have had some experience of the accountant of court in Scotland. I have grave reservations about whether the accountant of court will be able to deal with child trust funds in Scotland. In my experience, the accountant of court has an overseeing role rather than a proactive one, looking at estates that are being dealt with by curators and the like. Frankly, and at the risk of getting into trouble with the legal establishment in Scotland, dealing with the accountant of court was a somewhat bureaucratic experience.
	We need to deal with child trust funds in an intrinsically different way. So far as children in care are concerned, for the most part, the sums involved will be relatively small. Regular payments might have been made in some cases, but my guess is that the majority of funds will consist of the basic trust fund. There could be quite a lot of relatively small funds and I question whether the accountant of court or the Official Solicitor—as I said, I do not know whether the Official Solicitor performs a similar function—would have the staff or expertise to deal with such matters proactively. In my experience, the accountant of court's organisation is very conservative. There is a danger that such trust funds will simply be left sitting and that no one will look at how individual funds are performing and whether they are in the best interests of the children in question.
	I was intrigued to hear the Financial Secretary say that the Official Solicitor will react to the religious or ethical views of the child. How will that be done? Will the child phone the Official Solicitor and say, "I don't want the money in my trust fund put into arms companies, tobacco companies or companies that experiment on animals." I have no objection to people having ethical funds—many do, and rightly so—but this will create an entirely new problem with which the Official Solicitor must deal. Given the number of children who might be in care at a given time, I suspect that a considerable burden will be placed on the Official Solicitor, who will not have the resources to deal properly with the problem.

George Osborne: The hon. Gentleman has hit on an excellent point, on which I did not touch. Does he agree that there is a question about whether the Official Solicitor is required to find out the child's religious and ethical concerns? Will he be required to write to the child or will the child have to find out the Official Solicitor's address and write to him?

Michael Weir: That is an excellent point, because the situation has not been made clear. This issue needs to be addressed if such a requirement is to be part of the Official Solicitor's remit. Interestingly, a parent who is operating the account on the child's behalf might not necessarily have to take into account the child's religious or ethical views, which might differ from those of the parent. Such accounts would be intrinsically different.
	There are various objections to the proposal and they have been noted. I have tried hard to think of an alternative, but I admit to failure. I cannot think of an easy solution, unless we are to set up a completely new department. The hon. Member for Yeovil suggested that the FSA and the Treasury provide advice, but there is an intrinsic problem with that idea. To a large extent, they are regulatory organisations, and if such organisations were to advise another part of government about investment opportunities for young citizens, that could lead to extreme difficulties and create a legal minefield. By comparison, the prospect of a child suing the Official Solicitor or accountant of court pales into insignificance.
	I am not entirely clear about what will happen when a child is taken into care. If there is an order putting a child into care—I do not know what happens in England, but in Scotland the matter is dealt with through a children's panel or a court—will the child trust fund automatically be transferred to the Official Solicitor or accountant of court, or will a separate function be required for the transfer? Presumably, if the trust fund is already up and running when the child is taken into care, it is controlled at that point by a parent, or by someone with parental responsibility. I assume that that matter will be dealt with in the regulations, but I should be obliged if the Financial Secretary would address that point.

Ruth Kelly: A lot of interest has been expressed in the role—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Financial Secretary should say "With the leave of the House."

Ruth Kelly: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful for that advice. A lot of interest has been expressed in the role of the Official Solicitor, and I hope to be able to address some of the concerns raised by Opposition Members. The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) described the sales regime as the missing piece of the jigsaw. He is correct to say that that was initially expected in November, but the Financial Services Authority decided to do a second round of market testing to ensure that the sales regime was appropriate and adequate to sell stakeholder products across the full range—not just the child trust fund. It is important that that is done correctly and appropriately, and that those decisions are not rushed. We are in close contact with providers who either intend to or are thinking about entering the market for the CTF. Most providers say that they intend to offer child trust funds directly to people, so they would be unaffected by the precise nature of the sales regime on that account.
	Turning to the role of the Official Solicitor, I would first like to point out that the number of children involved is not very great. It is certainly not the total number of children in care. I know that the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) is interested in the circumstances in which children have their trust fund managed by the Official Solicitor. I can tell him and other hon. Members in their places today that the Official Solicitor takes charge of an account where there is absolutely no one with parental responsibility for that child.
	It applies where a child does not have face-to-face contact with their parents and when it is part of the care plan that the child will live permanently away from home. It applies where a child has had contact with their parents terminated, where a child's parents are mentally incapacitated, where a child's only parent is in prison for a significant period of time or where a child is looked after because they have been abandoned by both parents and there is no prospect of reunification with the parents for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of children in care will have someone with parental responsibility to manage their accounts.

David Laws: Has it been possible for the Financial Secretary to make any assessment of the number of cases in which the Official Solicitor would act in loco parentis?

Ruth Kelly: It is extremely difficult to produce an accurate assessment of the numbers involved, but I think that we are talking of about 2,000 cases rather than the total number of children in care. The Official Solicitor is very clear about the appropriateness of undertaking this role. He already has responsibility for looking after the funds of children in different categories and the provisions fit neatly into that current role.
	To answer some of the questions raised by the hon. Members for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) and for Tatton, the responsibilities of the Official Solicitor will include: monitoring the performance and suitability of the CTF account; moving the account to a different provider or a different type of account, if appropriate; keeping the child informed of any movements made; engaging with the child, as necessary; and relinquishing the management role either when someone appropriate with parental responsibility for the child becomes available or when the child reaches the age of 16. The hon. Member for Tatton asked about the position applicable to a child who may be mentally incapacitated at the age of 16, but I urge him to wait for the mental incapacity Bill—shortly to be debated in the House—which will answer his question.

David Laws: I must say that, the longer the Financial Secretary explains the job, the more difficult and undesirable it sounds. What guidance has she given to the Official Solicitor about how active he should be in managing these accounts in circumstances where markets are very volatile? Is it envisaged that the Official Solicitor is likely to be involved in managing these accounts, or would he or she do so only under crisis conditions?

Ruth Kelly: I am afraid that I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman's question in full at this stage. We are currently involved in detailed negotiations with the Official Solicitor regarding the precise criteria that he will have to consider in monitoring the performance and deciding whether to switch providers for CTF accounts. I should point out that the Inland Revenue would open a child in care's account and at that point the Official Solicitor would take over the management of it. That is when the Official Solicitor would have to decide whether to continue with the existing provider or switch to a different one. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree, monitoring the performance of the fund is a vital role.

Michael Weir: The Financial Secretary has talked a great deal about the Official Solicitor, but can she tell us what discussions she has had with the accountant of court? Although that seems to be Scotland's nearest equivalent to the Official Solicitor, I know from experience that the accountant of court does not normally undertake this sort of work. Has the Financial Secretary discussed these issues with the accountant of court's department?

Ruth Kelly: I can certainly assure the hon. Gentleman that we have had discussions on similar lines with the accountant of court in Scotland. Indeed, the Scottish Executive recommended the accountant of court as the office with the closest relationship to the Official Solicitor in England. However, those discussions are still ongoing. Given that the regulations are currently being drawn up, I can undertake that, when they are published shortly after the full recommendations are set out to the House—probably towards the end of this month or perhaps the beginning of June—I will provide a full commentary on the Official Solicitor's role in these matters. That will describe the circumstances under which the Official Solicitor would take advice and deal with the sort of concerns mentioned by the hon. Member for Yeovil.
	I urge the House to support the amendment. It is important that looked-after children in care, where there is no one with parental responsibility, have an individual to take care of and manage their account and ensure that it is operated in the best interests of the individual child.
	Lords amendment agreed to.
	Lords amendment No. 2 agreed to.

Clause 4
	 — 
	Inalienability

Lords amendment: No. 3.

Ruth Kelly: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 4 to 6 and Nos. 8 to 11.

Ruth Kelly: These are purely technical and minor drafting amendments. Unless hon. Members want me to explain them further, I am happy just to present them and ask the House to agree to them.
	Lords amendment agreed to.
	Lords amendments Nos. 4 to 6 agreed to.

Clause 10
	 — 
	Further Contributions by Inland Revenue

Lords amendment: No. 7.

NOTHING

George Osborne: I beg to move amendment (a) thereto.
	Lords amendment No. 7 is rather curious and a little troubling. It gives the Government the power to make payments to children in custody. Those children would, as I understand it, otherwise be excluded because no one is in receipt of child benefit on their behalf.
	The amendment is curious for two reasons. First, it amends clause 10, which deals with further payments rather than initial payments. As I understand it, in some rare cases, children of 14, 15 or 16 may have a child trust fund opened for them for the first time. Such children may be in custody and, under the current legislation, I am unsure whether they would receive an initial contribution or whether they could have a CTF. The Government may want to correct that omission later.
	Secondly, the amendment is curious because, in all the consultation documents and in Committee debates, the Government said that they were planning to make further payments into CTF accounts only when the child reaches the age of seven.
	Even in the Home Secretary's Britain there are not many newborn babies in custody. I do not imagine that there are any seven-year olds there either. On the face of it, therefore, the amendment is pointless, as it is about paying money to children aged seven who are in custody, even though there are no such children. However, I suppose that the Government want to have the option of making further payments to children aged over 12, which is when children can be in custody.
	I hope that the Financial Secretary will say whether there are plans to make a further payment into CTFs at the age of 14 or 16. In the initial consultation document, it was envisaged that payments would be made at three different ages. I cannot remember whether those ages were five, 11 and 16 or five, 11 and 14, but the proposal was something along those lines. Perhaps the Government are reverting to their original plan. I suspect that all will depend on the electoral timetable prevailing at the time the children reach the relevant ages.
	However, amendment (a) addresses a more serious point. The Home Secretary has stoked up an endless debate about whether more children should be in custody. Children who commit what most of us would regard as fairly serious crimes are not put in prison, but are given community service orders and so on. By definition, children who are in prison have committed very serious crimes, and the House needs to pause and consider whether it is really a good idea to give them an unconditional cash windfall at some future date. What sort of message will that send to such children about punishment and reward in our society, and about what society thinks of their behaviour?
	I do not say that such children should be excluded totally from receiving payments. I also recognise that the Financial Secretary might contend that my amendment could lead to some rough justice. For example, a child who is not in prison on his or her 16th birthday might have been in prison for three years before that, whereas a child might happen to be in prison for three or four days just when his or her 16th birthday comes around. That child would therefore lose out. I agree that that would not be fair, and so amendment (a) is conditional in two respects.
	First, the amendment would merely give the Government a conditional power to introduce regulations. That means that they could choose to take up the power, or not. Secondly, it simply suggests that, before money is paid to a child in custody, there needs to be a report from the person who is legally responsible for the child—the prison governor, or someone of that ilk—that attests to the child's good conduct over the previous year.
	The amendment would mean that bad behaviour was not rewarded, and that the Government would not be sending out mixed messages. The prison authorities could use the provision as an incentive to encourage good conduct, and as a way of steering troubled children on to a more responsible path.
	That seems a matter of common sense. The House should consider the alternative. A child who commits a crime that is serious enough to cause him or her to be sent to prison might be so poorly behaved in custody that the person legally responsible is unable to attest to his or her good conduct. That child might also have had various privileges withdrawn in custody, or been subject to disciplinary action. However, he or she will suddenly get a letter from the Inland Revenue saying, "Congratulations on reaching the age of 16, here's a cheque for £100."
	That would undermine the work of the prison authorities, and make life much more difficult for them. In some ways, such a letter could cut across what they are trying to achieve, and I can imagine prison governors getting extremely frustrated. Just when a governor wants to insist on a certain form of behaviour from a child in custody, that would be undermined by the Inland Revenue unknowingly sending a cheque. The child would pick up the cheque, wave it in the governor's face and say, "I've just got a cheque for £100. Obviously, some people in the Government do not think that I am behaving badly."
	Amendment (a) is a perfectly reasonable and conditional provision. It would give the Government the option to take regulatory powers, but would not insist on that. It merely says that children in custody should receive a Government handout from the taxpayer only if they behave well.
	I think that that is a pretty new Labour idea. It fits in with what the Home Secretary is doing—with parenting orders, child curfews and so on—to encourage good behaviour in children. Moreover, I emphasise that the amendment refers to children who have ended up in custody.
	I hope that the Financial Secretary will accept the amendment. If not, I shall press it to a Division.

David Laws: We support amendment No. 7, which deals with an anomaly in the original Bill, but we are not tempted by amendment (a), proposed by the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne). He invited us to believe that it would unite new Labour and the Conservative party, and that is good enough reason for Liberal Democrat Members to be suspicious of it.
	There are various practical problems with amendment (a). First, how likely is it that a young child who had committed enough crimes to be in prison would be deterred from similar behaviour by the fact that a payment would not be made to his or her CTF account—especially given that children cannot access those accounts until they are 18? I think that it is very unlikely that that would influence behaviour in any way.
	Secondly, the amendment would be an enormously administratively complex and bureaucratic measure to enforce. For that reason, I am surprised that the Conservative party have proposed it. It could also create further anomalies between those young people who had committed crimes and been given custodial sentences, and those who had been given non-custodial sentences. Moreover, as Lord McIntosh explained in another place, it could create anomalies in respect of young people who had committed a crime but who were not in prison at the time of the reporting period, which is when the sanction proposed in the amendment would be implemented.
	On top of that, the amendment could add a further penalty to the sentence being served by a young person. That does not seem sensible. Also, the Government's policy on CTF accounts is designed to give assets to children to help them, when they reach adulthood, to settle down, find employment and so on. To take that money away from children who—whether or not they have committed offences—are almost by definition the most vulnerable does not seem especially sensible.
	For all those reasons, I am afraid that Liberal Democrat Members support the Government's position on this matter, and not the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Tatton.

Ruth Kelly: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) for explaining the reasoning behind his amendment, and to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) for answering his points so eloquently. He has almost saved me the need to respond to the amendment myself.
	As originally drafted, the Bill would have prevented payments being made to the CTF accounts of children held in legal custody. Child benefit is not paid for those children and the award of child benefit is the key eligibility requirement for CTF payments. As the hon. Member for Tatton pointed out, we have left ourselves the flexibility to decide whether there should be age-related payments above the age of seven in future. Should a Government decide to make payments to children at any age over 12, those children who are held in custody on the relevant birthday would not receive the payments.
	We amended the Bill in the Lords to treat children in custody as entitled to child benefit purely for the purposes of the child trust fund. The amendment supports the view that children in custody should not receive those payments unless a responsible person informs the Inland Revenue that the child has been well behaved for the year prior to the relevant birthday.

George Osborne: Will the Minister deal with my point about the initial contribution to a child who opens a child trust fund when he or she is 14?

Ruth Kelly: I do not envisage any circumstances in which that scenario will apply. Children who move to the United Kingdom after the age of 12 will either get child benefit if eligible, and therefore access to the child trust fund, or, if they go straight into custody, the child benefit will not be awarded and a child trust fund account will not be available to them until they have left custody. That is an extremely unusual case and I cannot envisage a situation in which we would want to open a child trust fund for the first time for a child who is in custody.
	The hon. Member for Yeovil explained the practical, bureaucratic and administrative problems with the proposal. The argument touches on the principle of the matter. Only a small number of teenagers are held in custody—
	It being one hour after the commencement of proceedings, Mr. Deputy Speaker put the Question, pursuant to Order [this day].

Question put, That the amendment be made—
	The House divided: Ayes 92, Noes 263.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker then proceeded to put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that hour. Lords amendment No. 7 agreed to [Special Entry].
	Lords amendments Nos. 8 to 13 agreed to.

Armed Forces Personnel

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Derek Twigg.]

Adam Ingram: This debate is about armed forces personnel issues. When we talk about personnel, we should always remember that it is not an abstract: we are considering the remarkable men and women who make up our armed forces. They are sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers; they are the people who are prepared to put their lives on the line in defence of this country and to give other nations the freedom to enjoy the human rights that have been denied them by repressive regimes—regimes which have been tolerated for too long because there are those who argue that it is always better to talk and never to act; to prevaricate while millions perish. It is into such cauldrons that we place our armed forces.
	As we have seen in Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and now Iraq, our armed forces consistently deliver as a force for good. It is against that backcloth and in that context that I want to open today's debate.
	I suggest that there is a vast difference between what we do in this place and what our armed forces are doing in troubled parts of the world in the most difficult circumstances. Our armed forces are not automatons—unthinking and uncaring. They have the same standards and values upon which this nation built its reputation. Some of them make mistakes, just like the rest of us. A very few of them do things that might not make us proud: after all, the men and women of Her Majesty's armed forces are human. At all times we must ask them to achieve the very highest of standards, knowing that they can never be perfect.
	It is deeply disturbing that there are those who are prepared casually to vilify our armed forces without first establishing the facts. It is one thing to have a go at Ministers; we know the business we are about. We have been asked by the Prime Minister to perform our public duties, and we try to do that to the best of our abilities. We are judged in the public spotlight. Ministers at least have the chance to answer back. Our servicemen and women do not.
	The childhood adage has it that words will never hurt. But I think we must reconsider that, because the words that some have been using about our armed forces hurt them. The public debate has been unbalanced by some individuals who lay claim to sole ownership of human rights; who convert any allegation, true or otherwise, into fact; and who judge and condemn our armed forces without giving them the benefit of explaining events.
	We have laws. Our armed forces are subject to the rule of law, and it is within that system that their behaviour should, and will, be dealt with. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has said, two cases are at an advanced stage. In those cases and in any others that may follow, justice will be done and will be seen to be done, because one fundamental principle of human rights is that people are innocent until proven guilty. Whatever demands we place upon our personnel, above and beyond those of civilian life, we do not deprive them of that right.

Joan Ruddock: My right hon. Friend will know that the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross referred not just to the treatment of detainees; it also talked about the brutality of some arrests and about a defective administration system that did not allow for proper notification of the families of those who had "disappeared". Can my right hon. Friend give us some comfort as to whether those matters have been rectified, in the interests both of the human rights of Iraqi citizens and of the safety and security of our armed forces?

Adam Ingram: As my hon. Friend will be aware, I cannot talk about the detail of the ICRC report and I shall come to the reasons for that later on. However, she raises a matter of general concern, which I shall also touch on later in my speech. It goes without saying that wherever alleged wrongdoing is identified, appropriate action will be taken, whether that involves the need for renewed instructions or specific instructions, or for criminal prosecution. I can give my hon. Friend those assurances. The ICRC is currently carrying out a subsequent investigation, and we are awaiting a report on that subsequent examination of all that we do. I will mention more about that report in passing further on in my speech, but we await the outcome of the ICRC inquiry.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Adam Ingram: Hold on a moment.
	But I will not discuss that report in detail. I want to talk about the background to it, and I will come to that. I suggest to hon. Members who may want to intervene on the subject of the ICRC report that they let me explain the position on that, and perhaps they can then intervene. I want to make a bit of progress.
	Before I turn to the main elements of the way in which we seek within the Ministry of Defence to honour our responsibilities to our armed forces personnel, I should like to deal with the issues that have been raised concerning what I said, and what I meant by what I said, when I gave my statement to the House on 4 May.

John Redwood: Will the Minister give way?

Adam Ingram: No, not at present.
	Much has been made of my statement that I had not, at the time of speaking to the House, received a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross in which it expressed concerns about coalition treatment of detainees. Some have construed that to be a denial that I had seen any communication whatsoever about alleged wrongdoings by British troops.
	The word "report" has a specific meaning to me. A report is something that is properly researched, properly constructed and properly presented. The interim ICRC report of 10 February satisfied those criteria, and when I said I had not received it, that was a correct and honest answer. That does not mean to say that I was unaware of the issues and the actions being taken.
	Let me make it clear that we co-operate fully with the ICRC. It is offered full access to the detention facilities that we operate and each concern that it brings to the attention of the Government is treated very seriously and investigated fully.
	A second report from the ICRC, a working paper—this is what I was referring to earlier—specific to UK detention facilities has also now been received. It, too, will be examined very closely, and where it makes recommendations, we will deal with them. However, I should tell the House that the report describes UK detention facilities as "fairly good" and notes that we have responded to the earlier concerns. I hope that that deals with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock). That, I suggest, contrasts with some of the lurid statements of recent days.
	I should also comment on the suggestions that we should publish ICRC reports. We will not do so without the express permission of the ICRC. I would have hoped that right hon. and hon. Members appreciated that the valuable work of the ICRC depends upon the confidentiality of its work. It is more than a matter of bad reports or good reports. Without the principle of confidentiality, the ICRC might lose access to detainees in countries where they are most at risk—and not only that: it could put ICRC personnel in danger.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Adam Ingram: I may be dealing with the point about which hon. Members are concerned.
	The deaths mentioned by Amnesty International in letters to me fall into a different category. Amnesty does not have access to UK detention facilities, but it has commented on a number of issues. I understand from press and media reports that Amnesty has said that it submitted a dossier to me in October last year. Some may call them reports. I received only one document from Amnesty last October. It is hardly a dossier. [Interruption.] It is a letter just over a page in length, dealing with one incident. In my reply of 11 November, I set out the details of the investigation that was already under way into the death in custody of Baha Mousa, also known as Baha al-Maliki. I do not know whether the House would like to me read out that letter, but let me say that it is not a dossier, as some have alleged, nor is it a report.

John Redwood: When, last September, the Government rightly decided to ban the hooding of prisoners, what else did they consider by way of maltreatment of prisoners, and what evidence did they have before them at that point on the basis of which to make that very sensible decision?

Adam Ingram: The right hon. Gentleman should be aware—if he has followed this with due interest, rather than for the sake of party political point scoring—that these are very serious matters. As we know, the operational chain of command identified that the ICRC report was received by permanent joint headquarters and appropriate action was then taken once those matters were brought to the attention of the operational command in theatre. So a decision was taken to cease immediately. Three issues were raised in the ICRC report—that is in the public domain—and we were already acting on them before we received that report so many months later.

Adam Price: Will the Minister give way?

Adam Ingram: Hold on a moment. It is interesting that no one is particularly interested in me reading out this particular report.
	So the central charge is that I received reports about abuse in detention and did nothing about it. That simply does not stack up.

Richard Younger-Ross: I wonder whether the Minister can clarify a point. Yesterday, in response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), the Prime Minister was asked whether he had seen a copy of the report. He answered that he had not needed to see a copy of it because it related to British troops and that that was being dealt with. The Minister has said that he is aware of the details of these reports, although he had not seen the report itself. Was he therefore aware of the abuses that have been alleged in American detention centres? If so, has he raised those issues with the US authorities? Will he confirm that the impact of what is happening in America has a direct bearing on the security of our forces on the ground in Iraq?

Adam Ingram: I would have hoped for a better intervention than that, but the hon. Gentleman should read exactly what the Prime Minister said. He said that the allegations that had been made and the issues that had been raised had been dealt with. That is exactly the position. The three issues raised by the ICRC—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Gentleman want an answer? The ICRC had reported in February about matters that already had been taken on board within theatre, and the Royal Military Police had immediately commenced an investigation into one of the issues raised.
	The hon. Gentleman asks whether I should be concerned about what other coalition forces do. We are each concerned about what the other does in those circumstances, but it is not my job to answer for any other of the 30 nations that are there. I am here to answer, on behalf of Her Majesty's armed forces, about what they have done, what they have allegedly done and how we then conduct our business in those theatres of operation in which we are operating.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Adam Ingram: I do not know whether hon. Members want me to read out the letter from Amnesty International.

Edward Garnier: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister to taunt us with this report? If he thinks that it is appropriate to read the thing out, he will read it out, but it is not for him to impose on us the burden—[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that that is a point of debate, not a point of order for the occupant of the Chair.

Gregory Barker: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would it not be usual in these circumstances for the Minister to place the document in the Library?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Again, that is not a matter for the occupant of the Chair.
	May I tell the House that these are serious matters, which should be discussed in an orderly manner, without sedentary sniping from either side? Not only does the House wish to understand fully and clearly what has happened, but there is great anxiety outside in the country.

Adam Ingram: Before the points of order, I was about to give way to the hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison). He intervened on me on 4 May, and I am only too happy to give way to him again.

Andrew Murrison: The Minister will be aware that British forces have been used to transport Iraqi detainees to American interrogators. Does he not believe, given the contents of this and other reports, that we have a duty to make sure that the facilities and treatment in those centres are reasonable? If he does, at what point did he stop the use of British personnel for transporting Iraqi detainees into the clutches of the Americans?

Adam Ingram: The reality is that we established our own facility, which was subject to further examination by the ICRC. As we have our own facility for that purpose, the use of British personnel stopped at the time it was established. That is an important aspect of the way in which we take responsibility for detainees and the way in which we interact with the community in Iraq.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Adam Ingram: I think that I should first deal with some of the central charges.
	Matters have been raised outside the House by Amnesty International, which has claimed that it passed a dossier to me. All the allegations that I have seen are about that, and I repeat that I have dealt with that case. It was not a dossier—it was one case and it is still under investigation.
	I suggested that the central charge that we had received reports about abuse in detention and done nothing about them does not stack up. There can be no more graphic illustration of those dangers than the photographs published in the Daily Mirror on 1 May 2004 purporting, and claimed by the Daily Mirror, to show the physical abuse of an Iraqi at the hands of two British soldiers. Right hon. and hon. Members will understand that the investigation is a matter entirely for the Royal Military Police special investigations branch. Ministers cannot, do not, and should not interfere. As the investigation continues into the very serious allegations made, it would be inappropriate for the details of the evidence that emerges to be disclosed.

Gordon Prentice: Will the Minister give way?

Adam Ingram: Once I have finished my explanation I shall certainly give way to my hon. Friend.
	If the investigation results in criminal proceedings, the evidence will become public at that stage, just as would be the case in criminal proceedings in the ordinary UK courts. Whether any prior disclosure of evidence is made is quite properly a matter for the RMP, which acts with the benefit of legal advice. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence said in his statement to the House of Commons on Monday that the special investigation branch believe that there are strong indications to suggest that these photographs are not genuine. I said on 4 May that we had to treat the photographs at face value. That value has changed. Investigations are now proceeding on this basis: these pictures were categorically not taken in Iraq. Moreover, I can tell the House not only that that is the opinion of the SIB investigators but that it has been independently corroborated. The truck in which the photographs were taken was never in Iraq. I know that right hon. and hon. Members would like to hear more detail about the evidence, but I hope that they appreciate that those involved may have committed criminal offences under military law, which are the proper subject of ongoing investigations by the RMP. Accordingly, right hon. and hon. Members will understand why it would be inappropriate to say anything more about the emerging evidence.

Andrew Miller: I have an interest in this matter, as the Cheshire Regiment is currently in Iraq and, as a result of the publication of those photographs, is at risk. Does the investigation go so far as to allow for a possible prosecution of those involved in the chain between the Army personnel alleged to be involved and the newspaper? Indeed, could it bring about the possible prosecution of the editor of the newspaper?

Adam Ingram: That is not part of my ministerial responsibility for the armed forces. I am certain that the editor is not subject to military law—[Interruption.] Some may think that he should be. Given my hon. Friend's concern about the way in which the prestigious name of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment has been dragged through the mud by the Daily Mirror, the concerns he has just expressed will be well understood in the area he represents.

Keith Simpson: Can the Minister confirm one thing? He stated categorically that the photographs were effectively fakes. Nevertheless, it was intimated by the Daily Mirror that they could be a re-enactment. [Interruption.] I am trying to be helpful so that the Minister can clarify whether there is investigation into whether or not there was a re-enactment.

Adam Ingram: I shall come on in more detail to the way in which we can progress the investigation.

Chris Bryant: If, as the Minister says, the photographs were re-enactions or faked, is not the shocking thing that they seem to suggest that there has been systematic abuse? Nobody has yet advanced any evidence of systematic abuse by British soldiers of any kind.

Adam Ingram: My hon. Friend makes a good point. They may not have advanced any evidence, but I am sure that he appreciates that some people have inferred that systematic abuse has taken place. Unquestionably, that is not the case. There is no question but that we are dealing with individual incidents, all of which are under investigation. If any new incidents come to light they will be subject to the same intense investigation.
	The special investigation branch's priority continues to be identifying the individuals referred to by the Daily Mirror as soldiers A and B. When breaking the story on 1 May, the Daily Mirror claimed that those soldiers had witnessed mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. Indeed, it even said that one of them took part in such mistreatment. We have consistently said that allegations will be investigated and that, if justified, appropriate action will be taken. There has been an extensive and intensive operation by the RMP in respect of the Daily Mirror's claims involving many investigators. SIB resources inevitably have had to be diverted from other tasks.

David Borrow: It is reported that the Daily Mirror is co-operating fully with the Ministry of Defence. As part of that full co-operation has it given details of names, places and times in the incidents that form the basis of the allegations? Can my right hon. Friend tell us how much officer time been wasted on that wild goose chase?

Adam Ingram: That is a very good question, and I hope that the Daily Mirror can see its sense. No, it has not co-operated to the extent that my hon. Friend suggested. The investigation has not yet been completed and a substantial amount of officer time has been allocated to it. Because of the nature of the public controversy and the scrutiny involved we have had to put considerable resources into it, diverting essential resources from elsewhere.

Howard Stoate: Given that the photographs appear to be fakes, can my right hon. Friend quantify the extra risk at which they put our service personnel? Fraudulent photographs in the newspapers must cause significant extra risk to the brave men and women who are serving our country in Iraq.

Adam Ingram: That is another very good point. It was a matter to which I referred in my statement to the House on 4 May. Investigating officers in Iraq are conducting their investigations in a sometimes extremely dangerous environment, and we are putting those officers at risk, as well as others. I want to deal with the impact of the photographs.

Gordon Prentice: Will my right hon. Friend finally allow me?

Adam Ingram: If my hon. Friend would let me finish a sentence and deal with the issues—I understand that he may want to defend the good name of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, and I am happy to allow him to do so.

Gordon Prentice: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. My question is a simple one. I have always believed that the photographs were fakes. What redress does the Queen's Lancashire Regiment have, because Piers Morgan has traduced its good name? Can the QLR sue the Daily Mirror for the fake photographs?

Adam Ingram: I recognise my hon. Friend's concern for the good name of the QLR and I hope his concern extends across Her Majesty's armed forces. We need to see the end of the process before people judge what legal action they can take. It is not for me to direct them, but I fully appreciate how angry the officers and men and women of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, and their extended families across the country, are about the allegations.
	The priority is to get to the bottom of the allegations and, if wrongdoing has occurred, to take appropriate action. That is why I call again on the editor of the Daily Mirror to assist fully in the inquiry. From the start of this episode the Daily Mirror has demanded that the MOD and the Army operate under the highest standards of honesty, openness and professionalism. I challenge the Daily Mirror to do the same.
	It is appropriate that we should debate these matters today, because they bear directly on the morale and, indeed, on the safety of the men and women—regulars, reserves and civilians—whom we ask to perform difficult and dangerous work: men such as the crew of a Warrior armoured vehicle from the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment who, only few days ago, were injured by a petrol bomb thrown through the commander's hatch. Their assailants were children, so the crew did not respond to the attack.
	Two days before that, in al-Amarah, the same regiment did not return fire against militiamen who were cynically making use of women and children as cover. Two days before that, a grenade was thrown at a UK patrol boat in Basra. The assailant was seen, but the Royal Engineers used no force owing to the presence of civilians. Those are only three examples of the sensitivity, forbearance, skill, self-restraint and courage shown by our armed forces in the conduct of their duties, and we would be right to think that such examples occur every day.
	Let us consider the scale of the shadow cast over the QLR by the present furore. The hon. Members who have raised the good name of the regiment have every right to do so. I take the opportunity to compliment the regiment's considerable contribution during its tour of duty last year in Iraq. Members of the regiment helped to pacify Basra during an undoubtedly turbulent summer. It is in no small measure due to their efforts and the efforts of others that progress continues to be made in Iraq.
	Iraq now has almost 80,000 Iraqi police. More than 20,000 reconstruction projects have been completed—mostly by Iraqi companies employing Iraqi workers—and that is helping to get the economy going. The capacity of Iraqi ministries is building fast and many have been passed formally to Iraqi control. After years of neglect, Iraq's infrastructure is slowly modernising, with bridges, pylons, railways and water pipelines appearing across the country. British forces are playing a full part in the reconstruction effort. They have been involved in 2,700 projects. Their efforts will help ensure that by the end of the summer the quality and volume of water in Basra will surpass pre-war levels, and the production of electricity in the south-east will have greatly increased.

Gordon Marsden: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the catalogue of activities and achievements that he is giving is not a flash in the pan, but builds on what British troops have done over the past 10 years in other peacekeeping operations? Does that not strengthen the argument that the current allegations are far more likely to come as a result of isolated incidents than as a result of a failure to understand the necessary process of peacekeeping in countries such as Iraq?

Adam Ingram: I agree entirely. That is why the British armed forces are renowned for all they do. I was in Afghanistan a few weeks ago. Everywhere I went, I heard only good words about the work being done in that country by a very small number of British armed forces personnel, and I heard it from senior officers from other countries and from Afghans themselves. That is mirrored in the Balkans, in Kosovo and wherever else our people serve.

George Osborne: The Minister was speaking about the progress in Iraq. When sovereignty is handed over on 30 June, will the new Iraqi Government have exclusive responsibility for Iraqi detainees, for whatever reason they are picked up?

Adam Ingram: Those matters are under consideration as part of the ongoing process at the United Nations to work out what the framework of law and structure will be following that date. It is a matter that has still to be fully determined, together with the circumstances under which it would occur. The hon. Gentleman should wait to see what emerges. If he wants to pass judgement thereafter, he may do so.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Adam Ingram: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes).

Harry Barnes: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the law of administration for the state of Iraq for the transitional period, which has been adopted, refers to the setting up of a national commission for human rights in accordance with the Paris principles issued by the United Nations, and that the commission should include an office of ombudsman to inquire into complaints? If that is the procedure to be established once there is a transitional Government or in the period leading up to that in the near future, should we not have been doing something like that ourselves, in order to set the procedures in motion for the future?

Adam Ingram: Instinctively, I would say no to that, although I notice other hon. Members are nodding in agreement. The implication that can be taken from the question is that there is so much wrongdoing, and potential for so much wrongdoing, that we need some form of independent scrutiny of Her Majesty's armed forces. Our people operate under military and UK domestic law. We have an open and democratic structure; Ministers are answerable for the armed forces and have to answer accordingly to this House. The example that my hon. Friend used has been considered in relation to another matter with which I will deal. I will not touch on the specifics, but I will refer briefly to it later because it relates to some of these issues. I hope that my hon. Friend will have a chance later to raise that suggestion.
	Inevitably, as we make progress, there will be those who oppose us and the transfer of power to an elected, representative Government—Saddam loyalists, terrorists and others intent on violence for personal gain. These are the thugs who desecrate society. The coalition is committed to helping the Iraqi people to ensure that their prospects are not held hostage. Of course, the UK will play its part.

Edward Leigh: Will the Minister give way?

Adam Ingram: No, I will not.
	I turn now to the issue of events at Deepcut barracks. As hon. Members are well aware, soldiers died at Deepcut as a result of gunshot wounds between 1995 and 2002: Private Sean Benton, Private Cheryl James, Private Geoff Gray and Private James Collinson. Each of the deaths was a tragedy. I offer my sincere sympathies to their families and friends.
	I am sorry that official business in Afghanistan kept me from attending the Adjournment debate on this important subject that was secured by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) on 27 April. However, I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who accepted that, in some respects, the families had not been looked after to the high standards that we now expect. I have met two of the four families involved and I have listened carefully to what they have had to say.

Oliver Heald: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister has moved on to a different subject but he referred earlier to a dossier from Amnesty International. Page 441 of Erskine May suggests that a Minister of the Crown may not cite a document without placing it upon the Table of the House. Will the Minister indicate whether he intends to do that?

Madam Deputy Speaker: The document is not a state paper, so the Minister may not be required to do so. Obviously if he wishes to do so, it is entirely up to him.

Oliver Heald: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Erskine May says that
	it has been accepted that a document which has been cited by a Minister ought to be laid upon the Table of the House, if it can be done without injury to the public interest.
	The Minister offered to read it out. Perhaps he will agree to do as Erskine May would suggest.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. My ruling was that, as it was not a state paper, it was entirely up to the Minister whether he chose to do so.

Adam Ingram: I am dealing with the deaths of four young people, and what do we get? We get a point of order from Opposition Front Benchers. Families are outside listening, but the hon. Gentleman is interested only in procedural wrangling from the Dispatch Box. I will deal as best I can with that matter after the debate, but the hon. Gentleman shames his party in what he seeks to do. [Interruption.] If he listened to what I was saying about Deepcut instead of shouting, he might regain some dignity.
	I had hoped to be able to respond formally today to Surrey police's fifth report into issues arising from the tragic deaths at the Princess Royal barracks, Deepcut, but right hon. and hon. Members will recognise that it would not be appropriate to do so, given the other serious matters that we have had to address today. That is not to say that those deaths are not a serious matter; they are. I therefore intend to return to the issue at an early date. I feel I owe it to the families to ensure that the matter receives the prominence and public scrutiny it deserves. [Interruption.] I hear another quip from the Opposition Front Bench. I hoped that I had explained myself to the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson). I said that I was not going to refer to the matter in detail, but would mention it in passing. If that has been misunderstood or if I have not explained myself properly, I apologise to him. But I suggest that he reconsider what I said to him instead of sitting and interjecting while we discuss an important matter. He can intervene if he wishes.

Lembit �pik: I thank the Minister for his clarification of how he intends to handle the very serious question of the four deaths at Deepcut. Does he accept my view, and that of the hon. Member for Perth (Annabelle Ewing), that it is better to handle such an important matter separately from the debate today? Will he accept my gratitude for the fact that the Secretary of State has now written a letter of apology to Des and Doreen James about the poor treatment they received at the time? Finally, will he assure me that the Government have not at this stage ruled out the prospect of a full, independent public inquiry? Will he assure me that they are at least considering the benefits of such an inquiry, which, as we all know, is what the parents would request?

Adam Ingram: I do not want to enter the debate because, by indicating my thought processes, we would begin to deal with the way in which I would have reported today to the House. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have met two of the families and may meet another one. If that gives me further matters to think about, this extra time may assist in the process. I want to give the matter due prominence and proper public scrutiny because it is right for the families. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments.
	As Minister of State with responsibility for the armed forces, it is my privilege to spend time with our forces in the field and to witness at first hand their endeavours, tribulations and successes. Despite the formidable challenges that our people have endured over the past year and the corrosive effect of the media, they remain in good heart. We owe them and the civilians who work alongside them a great debt.
	The global security climate today is complicated, uncertain and challenging. Both now and in the future, we will need flexible, agile and responsive armed forces. They will need to be interoperable with our allies and coalition partners. They must also be able to operate in fluid, concurrent operations. We will also need to maintain the ability to deploy on large-scale operations when the need arises.
	That means that we will continue to need our people to be of the highest quality. We accordingly need to have in place the policies to attract and retain high-calibre people and to support them and their families throughout their careers in the armed forces. We will also need to provide them with the training and education to fit them for their role and prepare them for their subsequent careers when they leave.We should never forget that people are the key component of capability, and we must look after them. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us lessons.

Anne McIntosh: As the Minister is aware, a number of servicemen and women from the Vale of York have served in Iraq and are currently still in situ. How has he addressed the problem of their morale and the concern of the families who will be separated from them for some considerable time, against the background of his earlier comments?

Adam Ingram: That is an issue that we have to address; obviously, it does not rest only with Ministers. We have a valuable role to play, which is why my ministerial colleagues and I visit as often as we can the various areas in which we are involved, to hear what our people have to say. We pick up issues about morale, and I know just how angry our forces are about the allegations that have appeared in the Daily Mirror. I hope that I have expressed my anger on their behalf, but it is probably a very low level of anger compared with what they feel. We must make sure that we stand by them and speak for them. All the criticisms that some people, even in this House, are prepared to level at our forces should be expressed with great caution, as they do damage.
	Our lessons learned process and the reports by the National Audit Office and the Select Committee on Defence have been very useful in helping us to recognise where we must improve. We consulted widely during a review of the way in which we dealt with the bereaved. In particular, we listened carefully to what the widows associations told us. We have concluded that we need simpler practices in many areas, including repatriation and casualty reporting. Changes are in hand, and we are keeping this whole area under constant review. We have also reviewed the operational welfare package for our personnel. As a result, we have introduced a family element to the package and are now providing welfare communications for early entry and manoeuvre forces.
	There have been wider lessons as well. The Department fully acknowledges that there were shortages of certain items of personal equipment during Operation Telic and that that was bad for morale. The key difficulty was our inability to track assets once they were delivered to theatre. For example, although some 38,000 sets of enhanced combat body armour were sent to Iraq, which was sufficient to equip those who needed it, not all troops received the ECBA before the commencement of hostilities. A package of improvements for logistics material management has been introduced to provide incremental improvements to logistic tracking and visibility.

Edward Leigh: Will the Minister give way?

Adam Ingram: I am going to try to make progress. I have taken a lot of interventions, and there are many issues. We are dealing with morale, and I want to touch on some important issues. I hope that my remarks will be heard elsewhere.
	We recognise the pressure that we place on our personnel and the potential impact on their families. That is why we seek to ensure that commitments do not become unsustainable. From a deployed operational peak at this time last year, we have managed to reduce the number of our service personnel on operations outside the UK and the Falkland Islands from 48,500 to 11,700.
	I shall move on to the policies that we have in place to sustain our people, and the current manning position. Recruiting and retaining the right numbers of the right quality personnel remains critical to achieving operational success. In part, that means getting pay and conditions right, and the Armed Forces Pay Review Body is key. I shall take the opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Baroness Dean, who retired after five years sterling effort as chair of the body. I would also like to welcome her successor, Professor David Greenaway. Under his guidance, I am confident that the Armed Forces Pay Review Body will continue rigorously to scrutinise service pay and to draw careful conclusions. This year, the Government have again accepted in full the Armed Forces Pay Review Body's recommendations, and we look forward to receiving its report early next year.
	Beyond pay, we must reassure our people that they can expect a good pension when they retire, and we must also provide adequate compensation for those who are injured in the course of their service. The House will be aware of our plans to introduce a new armed forces pensions and compensation scheme, and the Armed Forces (Pensions and Compensation) Bill completed its Commons stages on 6 May. Subject to successful completion of the necessary legislation, the schemes should be implemented in April 2005. Independent review has confirmed that both schemes will offer high quality benefits.

Julian Brazier: I am grateful to the Minister of State for giving way. Will he comment on the remarks of the Royal British Legion, which assists in large numbers of compensation cases? Up to three fifths of people who would get compensation for suspected war injuries under current arrangements will no longer get them because of the Government's plan to make such injuries more difficult to prove.

Adam Ingram: I am aware of the views expressed by the Royal British Legion. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who has been dealing with the Bill, advises me that we do not necessarily accept the methodology used to reach those conclusions, and that we continue to discuss the matter with the Royal British Legion and other bodies that have raised it. Many of the issues have already been discussed, although the matter will be considered in another place, and we will return to the Bill at a future stage, when the hon. Gentleman might have more information or have been satisfied by our explanations.
	Pay and pensions is only one part of the package. We must provide our people with the training and education that they require to get the job done and to facilitate their personal development. Their performance in Iraq is a remarkable tribute to their dedication, determination, training and preparation. The 2001 defence training review made more than 200 recommendations for improving individual training and education for both service personnel and civilians within the defence field, three quarters of which have already been implemented.
	Alongside training is the need for education. The Ministry of Defence is the largest provider of post-16 education in the UK. Individuals can gain transferable skills and qualifications that enhance both their careers and their future employment prospects. Across the armed forces, more than 40,000 personnel are registered for nationally recognised qualifications. Defence makes a vital contribution to wider national training and educational priorities.
	Before I close, I should like to highlight some of the wider work that we have in hand for our people. We have long recognised that the armed forces must truly reflect the society that they protect and are drawn from, and again the figures show sustained progress. At 1 February 2004, women represented more than 8.8 per cent. of the overall strength of the armed forces. At 1 January 2004, the figure for representation of ethnic minorities in the armed forces was 4.8 per cent., compared with 1.1 per cent. in 1999, and we are working hard to improve the position. All three services have specialist teams aimed at promoting careers in the armed forces to ethnic minority communities. Over the past year, the armed forces have increased their dialogue with the Muslim Council of Britain, and other spiritual leaders, to address how to encourage more people from those communities to take up a career in the armed forces.
	Finally, I would like to turn to families. We ask so much of our people's families that we owe them the right support. We have undertaken work to improve our handling of inquiries and investigations into death and serious injury of our servicemen and women. We want to reduce the time taken to conduct such inquiries, whenever possible, and keep families better informed of progress.
	A wide range of important work is in hand to address the concerns of service families. I should like to highlight in particular the service families taskforce. We have established a joint working group with the Department for Education and Skills to resolve the issues facing schools providing education for service children. The taskforce's contribution is also vital to ensure that Departments are informed of the impact of proposed legislation on service families. Finally, the taskforce has rightly identified housing provision as key in supporting our families. There is much that we can do to improve matters in this area.
	We are wholly committed to the provision of good quality accommodation for service personnel. The defence housing strategy outlined in the defence White Paper aims to meet those aspirations through a mixture of high-quality service family accommodation in the right locations to support mobility and choice for those individuals who choose greater stability. We aim to give personnel and their families more opportunities if they choose to settle or to buy their own house. That should help to improve continuity in health care, education and spouses' careers. Ultimately, all living accommodation, both for service families and for our single personnel, will be managed and delivered with a single vision in mindquality and choice.
	I am sure that many of those issues will be raised in the debate, and I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will return to some of them when he winds up.
	As at 1 March 2004, the full-time trained strength of the armed forces stood at 190,240an increase of some 2,000 on last year's figures. That is the result of sustained hard work across the three services. There remain pinch points where shortages of skilled personnel remain a concern, but even here there is good news to report. I should like to highlight in particular the Defence Medical Services. In January this year, we had nearly 350 more fully trained medical personnel than in 1999, and over 500 more are in the training pipeline. That represents real progress.

Peter Viggers: What effect will the cancellation of the Royal College of Defence Medicine at Selly Oak have on recruitment and retention in the Defence Medical Services?

Adam Ingram: I do not have an answer to that, because such matters have to be judged over time. The same question could be asked about any developments that may affect retention. They must be watched and studied, and we do so very carefully. That is why the Armed Forces Pay Review Body will return to areas where there are significant problems, then perhaps recommend certain paymentsgolden hellos and other incentivesthat will attract people or retain them. We must take account of any detrimental impact that works against the trends that I have described.
	Our people are working, as we speak, in many placesthe Gulf, Africa, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Northern Irelandto bring peace and stability to a very turbulent world. By dint of their efforts, and sustained by their core values of decency, respect for human rights and professionalism, they are working hard to make the world a more secure place for us all. We can rightly be proud of their efforts on our behalf. This House should speak with one voice and let them know that we give them our full support.

Keith Simpson: I begin by turning the attention of the House back to the points raised by the Minister at the beginning of his speech, particularly his mini statement on what now appear to be the faked photographs produced by the Daily Mail. [Hon. Members: Daily Mirror.] I mean the Daily Mirror. I think that the whole House recognises that those who connived with their production and those who published them did a great wrong. As the Minister said, they tainted the reputation, abiding humanity and decency of the British armed forces and their families that has been so successfully sustained over many years. Their good name and, as the Minister said, possibly their lives have been traded for what now appear to be cheap news headlines. As my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Defence said in the House on 4 May, the allegations made by the Daily Mirror must of course be thoroughly investigated. We look to the Daily Mirror board to take appropriate action.

Chris Bryant: Does the hon. Gentleman also believe that the Press Complaints Commission should act in this case?

Keith Simpson: I hope that it will do so and that it will examine all the details and evidence brought forward. That is not to say that all of us in the House do not recognise the right of a free press to put pressure on Ministers and the Opposition and if necessary, to reveal anything that they think is seriously wrong with the armed forces. This incident proves, however, that in this case one newspaper has probably gone beyond what most people would recognise as the right line.

Bob Spink: Following the revelations on prisoner treatment, my hon. Friend will be aware of the barbaric murder of the American civilian reconstruction worker in Iraq. Does he believe that the British Government should now consider the protection of any civilian reconstruction workers and aid deliverers in Iraq and of our service personnel?

Keith Simpson: Clearly, that is a question of which the Minister will be only too well aware. I imagine that extra measures have been taken in respect of our service personnel. Clearly, volunteer contractorsI believe that some 5,000 UK citizens are working in Iraqwill accept advice from the British Government and the military forces out there, while recognising that they are taking an increasing risk. Of course, that is a matter that they must decide.

Edward Garnier: I listened with care to what my hon. Friend said about the Daily Mirror. No matter how blameworthy it may be, and it appears to be that, it does not absolve the Government for strategic and policy failures. Was he satisfied that he received an answer to the apparent confusion that was left following the Minister of State's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) on 4 May and the statement made by the Secretary of State on Monday? It seems that there remains a hiatus and the Minister failed to fill it. Was my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) similarly confused by the Minister's recent remarks?

Keith Simpson: My hon. and learned Friend leads me nicely on to the second part of my comments about the Minister's mini statement.
	The whole House agrees that the contemptible behaviour of a few British soldiers, who, it is alleged, might have carried out such treatment of civilians or prisoners of war, does not represent the professionalism and dedication of the majority of our servicemen and women in Iraq. That is not under question. We all agree that there are no circumstances under which the brutal and disgusting humiliation of disarmed and helpless prisoners can be excused, even when one is at war on operations. However, the crisis, which is a crisis for the coalition, strikes at the very heart of the coalition's moral case, which we need to consider.
	The damage has already been done. It is not only the damage caused by the continuing revelations about atrocities carried out by certain elements of the United States armed forces. As the commander of 42 Commando Royal Marines, who was interviewed this morning, said, the damage has been done and has affected all of us. It will be incredibly difficult now to turn round opinion in Iraq and in the Arab world, as well as opinion in the United Kingdom.

David Borrow: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that had the Daily Mirror not published those photographs, it would be more likely that the Iraqi population would distinguish between the good conduct of our troops in southern Iraq as against the slightly different approach of the US troops in the Baghdad area?

Keith Simpson: The hon. Gentleman may well be right, but the problem now is that the coalition brand has been tainted across the board. Certainly, the actions of the Daily Mirror will not have helped. I do not think that many people in Iraq now make much distinction between ourselves and the Americans in relation to the question of who abused prisoners and, of course, the visual image has the biggest impact.

Kevan Jones: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the allegations and photographs have not just made things difficult for our armed forces and the coalition in Iraq, but made it difficult for the voice of moderate Muslims in the region to be heard? Does he agree that that damage will take a long time to repair?

Keith Simpson: I think that it will. It is now almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. As I have said, it is not just a question of the Daily Mirror but of what we see on our screens and of what is coming from Washington. Defence Secretary Rumsfeld has said that we must prepare ourselves for even more and even worse. I think that that undermines the whole coalition effort.

John Redwood: Ministers now tell us that policy on the treatment of prisoners was reviewed last September and a sensible decision was made about hooding. Would my hon. Friend expect Ministers to have been aware of that? Would he expect them to have called for papers and discussed issues? Would he expect them at that point to have reviewed the whole question of conduct towards prisoners to ensure that they were being dealt with in the right way everywhere?

Keith Simpson: I hope that my right hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not respond to his point immediately. I am about to list a series of questions for Ministers to answer.
	Along with my colleagues and, I suspect, some Labour Members, I have been dismayed by the way in which the Government, and the Ministry of Defence in particular, have responded to what has, in effect, been a crisis. At times, as we have seen this week, they have given an impression of muddle and incompetence. Cursory reading of a newspaper or attendance in the Chamber would have revealed the contradictory statements of the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence and the Prime Minister. That can only encourage those who wish to see the coalition defeated and undermine the morale of our troops.
	What I and others are criticising is not our armed forces, but the muddle and incompetence of Ministers. That is the point at issue. Notwithstanding the numerous questions asked and the two statements made in the House, a number of questions remain unanswered. They should be cleared up now, because we will face further crises like this over the next few weeks that will put our troops in even greater danger. I shall be happy to give way to the Minister of State if he wishes to answer any of the questions that I put to him.
	There is a crucial question about the ICRC report. Until I read it, I did not realise that it put together allegations about both American forces and our own forces. The report was passed on and we understand from the Foreign Secretary's statement that it eventually reached the permanent joint headquarters. I gather that it was decided there not to pass it on to the Ministry of Defence. Is that correct? It is not a rhetorical question. Does the Minister wish to answer it? Perhaps he does not know the answer. I believe, on the basis of my experience of working at the Ministry of Defencesome years ago, admittedlythat the political secretary at the permanent joint headquarters would certainly pass such a report to the policy-making centre at the Ministry. Either it stopped there, or Ministers were never informed. This is not some pedantic point. It is crucial in terms of policy and the Government's ability to respond to the kind of accusations that have been made.
	Given the report's reference to the coalition forces, both the American forces and ours, did the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence or the Cabinet Office make representations to their United States counterparts at any point since its publication? Was the Secretary of State for Defence, for instance, totally unaware of the allegations against the Americans? Might it not have been in the interests of the coalition for him to speak to Defence Secretary Rumsfeld to point out that these were serious allegations and to recognise the damage that they would do to the coalition?
	According to The Observer on 9 May, the MOD confirmed that three British military personnel were stationed at Abu Ghraib prison. Who were they? To whom did they report? Were they aware of the mistreatment and abuses going on? Did those British servicemen at any point make complaints about maltreatment and irregularities at the prison to their superiors? Were Ministers made aware of that? I should be happy to take an intervention from the Minister on thatbut no, he does not want to come back to me on it.
	It is my understanding that Umm Qasr prison camp, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison), was initially operated by the British armed forces. On 7 April 2003, its administration was handed over to the United States, only for it to be handed back to the British forces on 25 September. On 1 April, the ICRC orally informed the political adviser of the commander of the British armed forces at coalition forces Central Command in Doha about methods of ill treatment used by United States military personnel at the camp. Did the British Army continue to hand over Iraqi prisoners to the United States forces despite the warnings about that ill treatment or was that handing-over procedure stopped? If the answer is yes, who made the decision and were Ministers informed of it? I do not know whether the Minister wants to come back on thatno, he does not.
	My final point concerns the letter, report or documentcall it what we willof Amnesty International that has got the Minister into so much trouble and produced what could best be described as the Clinton defence on a point of detail over the word contract. Because the Minister is an honourable man, I sincerely hope that he will put into the public domain the Amnesty International document that he showed us at the Dispatch Box.

Adam Ingram: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he got in touch with Amnesty International and asked it to produce the dossier that it sent to me, and if not, why not? It is Amnesty that has said that it is a dossier.

Keith Simpson: No. I have to say to the Minister that I would love to be the Minister for the Armed Forces, but it is he, not me, who has to answer for the Government. It seems that what we have seen today is a lot of legalistic semantics from a Minister who has been unable or unwilling to answer the even more substantial questions that I have just put to him. I am sure that members of the armed forces and the press will notice that.
	Both the US and the UK have been steadily losing the confidence of the public over Iraq. To my mind, that is a tragedy. As one who firmly supported the Government in their operations in Iraq, I sincerely hope that, through the good efforts of the United States and our Government, we will be able to hand over to an Iraqi Government on 30 June. However, our Government have created a series of blunders. The Ministry of Defence appears not to know what is going on with major allegations, which seems to replicate what has happened in other Departments. For example, we saw what happened in the Home Office over its asylum policy, when Ministers appeared to blame civil servants and said that things were not going correctly but that they did not know what was going on. So far, as we have seen, the Minister here has been unable to answer any of my questions.

Edward Leigh: There is one point that has not yet been made in this interesting debate. If we are talking about the morale of our troops and the need to win over public support, does my hon. Friend think that it would be useful for the Government to share with the House their future strategy for Iraq? No one expects the Government to give us exact details on when we might withdraw, but we want some kind of intimation of what their exit strategy is, what sort of guidelines are being laid down and when our troops might be coming homeor at least when we might start to reduce their numbers.

Keith Simpson: My hon. Friend has raised a series of points that others have raised with the Prime Minister. The date of 30 June is less than two months away, and we assume that the Prime Minister will consult our senior coalition partner to establish a strategy that is credible and that will somehow manage to reverse the dangerous situation that our troops now see themselves in. There must be security and a diplomatic and military strategy for Iraq, and I look forward to Ministers producing that.
	The Minister has not answered a number of crucial questions. Either he just did not know or was not told or there is a degree of incompetence that I cannot believe exists in the Ministry of Defence, which I always thought was well run. It is not that I or other Opposition Membersor, indeed, Labour Back Benchersare critical of the actions of British troops. We are not; but we are critical of what appears to be the stumblebum activity of Ministers.

James Gray: Before my hon. Friend leaves the handling of prisoners in Iraq, may I ask if he is aware of an exchange between our noble Friend the late and much lamented Lord Vincent and Lord Bach in the House of Lords last July, some six months before the Red Cross report? Lord Vincent asked about the handling of Iraqi prisoners. Lord Bach said that that was a matter of grave concern, that he would look into it and that he would pay it every possible attention. Is it conceivable that the Red Cross report was then ignored?

Keith Simpson: I think that my hon. Friend made a slip of the tongue; that was in fact the late Lord Vivian.
	What concerns many hon. Members, and many people in the armed forces, some of whom are probably watching the debate, is the fact that those issues were raised. They were raised on a large scale in Washington, yet they seem to have come as a great surprise to Ministers. Why?
	I shall try to keep the rest of my remarks relatively short, because many hon. Members wish to speak

Adam Ingram: The hon. Gentleman wanted me to respond to his questions, so, just for the record, three issues directly relating to our armed forces were raised in the ICRC report. All of those were known about and were being addressed. Reports were being made. We knew about the Baha Mousa investigation; we knew about the hooding, which had been stopped in September; and of course, the other issue relating to a vehicle and the compensation relating to it was also known about. All the matters that the ICRC report eventually dealt with had already been acted on. As my noble Friend Lord Bach said, we all take these matters seriously, and we acted on them. I am interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that there are any other issues that we have not acted on in this context?

Keith Simpson: I refer the Minister back to the series of questions that I asked him and invite him to answer them. Can he confirm that there were three British military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison? Did they report back what was going on there, to him or to any senior military commander, or not?

Adam Ingram: The answer is yes and yes.

Keith Simpson: What action did the Minister then take? Did he contact his United States military counterpart

Adam Ingram: The hon. Gentleman is missing the point here. He asked whether there were three people there and whether they reported back. They always report back on the work that they are doing. He is assuming that there were adverse reports.

Keith Simpson: That is the whole question that I asked: were they adverse? Does the Minister want to reply to that?

Adam Ingram: They make reports, and those matters are then acted on[Interruption.] They report on all matters that are brought to their attention, and to the best of my information, as this question has been asked, no, the reports were not adverse.

Keith Simpson: The Minister is saying that those people did report back, but he has not said whether he knows whether they reported on the adverse conditions. Does he, to the best of his ability, know whether he or the Secretary of State raised the matter with Defence Secretary Rumsfeld or other Ministers in Washington? This is crucial, in terms of the reputation of the British armed forces, and of what Ministers knew about. The obvious conclusion is that either Ministers did not know about it, or they knew about it but decided not to report. Ah, a note has arrived from the Box: You're on your own.

Adam Ingram: rose

Keith Simpson: Aha!

Adam Ingram: Actually, the note does not say that. I was reflecting on it because it gives the same answer as that which I have already given. These people were always told to report back, and they saw nothing of the kind that the hon. Gentleman suggests. They did not observe what he is alluding to.

Keith Simpson: I am grateful to the Minister for that response. It has taken five minutes of questions to establish that there were British military personnel in Abu Ghraib when some of these activities took place but that, as far as he knows, they did not see, observe, witness or hear about such atrocities. I am grateful to the Minister for putting that on the recordI only wish that he had done so five minutes ago. It has been rather like getting an undergraduate to answer questions in a university viva.

Edward Leigh: A very important point has emerged in the last 10 minutes. We now know that we had our own people in that prison, in which there was widespread abuse, but apparently they told their superiors nothing of what was going on. That beggars belief. What were they doing there? Was there some form ofdare I use a phrase that is often used by Labour Members?cover-up in their minds? We need to know more and to see the reports.

Keith Simpson: My hon. Friend makes an important point. If there are such reports, perhaps the Minister might be willing to publish them, to prove not only that British military personnel were there, but that they did not see any atrocities taking place and, of course, that they were not directly involved in such things themselves. I genuinely believe that what we have experienced this afternoon does no credit to the Ministry of Defence, and it must be deeply worrying to members of our armed forces. If only Ministers would come clean and put on the record what actually happened, instead of putting up more smoke, tabloid newspapers would not have to pick up and make up stories. I hope that the Minister will be better prepared to deal with these issues in time for Monday's Defence questions.
	I turn finally and briefly to the other issues that the Minister touched on, the first of which is the pattern of operations and their impact on our armed forces. Deployments in the past seven years have included continuous operations in the Balkans, and additional operations in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Army commitments have fluctuated from a peak of 44 per cent. in 1999 to 22 per cent. in April 2001. In November 2001, there was a 31 per cent. commitment to operations, and a 40 per cent. commitment at the height of the Iraq conflict.
	Of course, we all recognise the professionalism and dedication of our armed forces, but reductions in the Army, Navy and Air Force are taking place between tour intervals, placing an increasing demand on all ranks. As many serving officers tell us, eventually, that begins to wear down the professionalism of the armed forces, and it begins to persuade manyparticularly those who are married and under pressure from their husbands or wivesthat they should think again about military service. I accept that Ministers have tried to address this issue, but they have yet to get it right.
	There is also the dreadful business of overstretch, as a result of which the armed forces frequently have to carry out concurrent military operations. Despite the best efforts of the strategic defence review, the armed forces are getting very close to being unable to do more than one big operation, perhaps alongside one small one. Indeed, it was the firemen's strike that put the biggest strain on our armed forces. We need to know what solution Ministers propose, given that, according to the defence White Paper, our armed forces will be involved in even more such operations, which will impose even greater stresses and strains.

David Wright: I spent some time with the forces through the parliamentary scheme over the last year, and I discovered that they are incredibly professional in their outlook. I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's comments about overstretch, which is highly important. Does he have any proposals to deal with the problem? Is he proposing to increase funding for the armed forces?

Keith Simpson: Sometimes, just occasionally, a Back Bencher can provide the opening that one has been looking for. If the hon. Gentleman wants to discuss the defence budget, I would refer him to the permanent secretary's evidence before the Select Committee yesterday. The Treasury said that the Ministry of Defence had, in fact, been incompetent in its handling of the defence budget. We are starting from such an appalling baseline that Sir Kevin Tebbit admitted that it would be wrong for him to say that the Ministry had enough money. The Labour Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), urged the MOD to stand up to the Treasury, saying:
	It may not be a crisis to you, but it looks like a crisis to us.
	The hon. Member for Telford (David Wright) is absolutely right, and an incoming Conservative Government will have to look at the books

Vernon Coaker: Pathetic.

Keith Simpson: I hear an old lag on the Front Bench shouting Pathetic from a sedentary position, so I suggest that he looks at the MOD's resource accounting and budgeting report, which the National Audit Office has not been able to sign off yet. We have written to the Secretary of State on countless occasions, but he has been unable to provide any answers.

Ivor Caplin: rose

Keith Simpson: I see the Under-Secretary wants to come to the rescue.

Ivor Caplin: As the hon. Gentleman is dealing with the financial position, is he aware that his colleague, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), last week committed his party from the Dispatch Box to 661 million of extra public spending in year one of anyhighly unlikelyfuture Conservative Government?

Keith Simpson: If we look up there, we can see a line of new Labour pigs flying past. I was here, which the Under-Secretary appears to have forgotten. Supposedly, one figure was produced and then, literally on the back of a fag packet, another. Please, let us get real about this. The armed forces are now facing a 1 billion budget deficit, so it is up to Ministers, who so far this afternoon have failed to answer most of the questions put to them, to come up with some answers.

Chris Bryant: rose

Keith Simpson: I have given way more than enough. I have been very generous and I would think that you, Madam Speaker, would[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is entirely in the gift of the Opposition spokesperson to decide whether or not to give way.

Keith Simpson: You put it so charmingly, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	Across the board, whether in the regular or reserve forces, there are significant manning problems, particularly with specialist groups of one sort or another. I have already touched briefly on the problem of retention. Many of us are concerned about the morale of the armed forces because the White Paper and the work strands seem to be placing emphasis on even smallerin terms of numerical strengtharmed forces. I suspect that the hon. Member for Telford would agree that if the Army is reduced to much below 100,000 it will be incredibly difficult to recruit and maintain certain specialist areas. With greater emphasis on special forces, that will put an even greater strain on a fine group of men and women who now have to be supported very heavily by the reserve forces.
	I wish to end by saying a few brief wordsas did the Minister of Stateabout families. I have special words of praise for the various service family support organisations, which do so much to keep families in touch with their military loved ones who may be on active service. Those groups tirelessly lobby Ministers and Chiefs of Staff on everything from pay and allowances, through accommodation to children's education.
	On Monday I met Lizzie Iron, the outgoing chairman of the Army families federation, who briefed me on the issues that concern her members. Ministers will be aware that concerns have been exacerbated by the increased years of often unaccompanied duty and by fears about what the White Paper may produce. Uncertainty increases anxiety, so I hope that Ministers will be able to reassure families that, following the implementation of the White Paper, their spouses' jobs are more secure and thatto use a hackneyed old phrasethings can only get better. I do not recall whether it was the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister-in-waiting who said thator was it the Chancellor of the Exchequer? These days, it is so difficult to know who the real leader of the Labour party is.
	The SDR and the defence White Paper recognise, as I know that Ministers do, the real added value as a force multiplierto use that awful terminologyof our high-quality armed forces. Their professionalism, skills and adaptability have been built up and maintained over decades by successive Governments and are the envy of many other countries and armed forces. However, the pace and frequency of operations place an increasing strain on them and their families. Cuts in time spent at home or on regrouping and training can eventually affect operational effectiveness. We should not assume that our armed forces, at this pace, can continue always to deliver what we expect from them.
	Leaks from inside the Ministry of Defence, and evidence presented to the Defence Select Committee about the likely conclusions of the 16 work strands, indicate cuts in the size of the armed forces and a smaller critical mass.

Richard Younger-Ross: I am not sure, but the hon. Gentleman seems to be proposing two alternatives. He rightly identifies that the stresses and strains on families are leading to problems of retention. That problem can be overcome either by increasing the size of the armed forces or by not undertaking as many operations. I remember that Conservative Members supported the war in Iraq, whereas Liberal Democrat Members did not. Which alternative does the hon. Gentleman prefer? Should we cut the number of operations or increase the resources?

Keith Simpson: In the end, we might have to reconfigure our armed forces. [Interruption.] The Minister of State laughs, but I am always prepared to tell him which work strand is considering that option at this precise moment. However, as happened with the ICRC report, he may not have seen what that strand is doing, or been made aware of it.
	If we degrade that added value, we face the prospect that our armed forces may not be able to deliver the very high standard of operational effectiveness that they, and we, would wish for. It is on them, as much as on technology, that we rely for our defence and security.

ROYAL ASSENT

Madam Deputy Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
	National Insurance Contributions and Statutory Payments Act 2004
	Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2004
	Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004
	Child Trust Funds Act 2004
	London Local Authorities Act 2004.

Armed Forces Personnel

Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I advise the House that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 10-minute time limit on Back Bench speeches. I call Rachel Squire.

Rachel Squire: I begin by presenting the apologies of the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, who is unable to be here today.
	People are the armed forces' most important asset. However much the technology of military operations may have advanced in recent years, it is on the professionalism, training and individual courage of service men and women that their effective conduct depends. I want to begin by paying tribute to the members of the armed services, and to their families.
	For the Defence Committee, personnel issues have always been important. Whenever the Committee visits British forces in the UK or overseas, members make a point of trying to talk to forces personnel of all ranks. The Committee reports regularly and considers the impact of policies and operations on personnel, as is shown by our reports on the lessons of Iraq and on the strategic defence review new chapter.
	We have also undertaken inquiries into specific personnel issues, such as pensions and compensation arrangements for the armed forces, and we are now beginning a major inquiry into the duty-of-care issues in the three services. If I have time, I shall make further reference to that inquiry later.
	On numbers, we heard encouraging news about progress towards manning targets from General Sir Michael Jackson, who told the Defence Committee a few weeks ago:
	The army is not yet at its target figure but it has, for example, increased by nearly 2,000 over the last 12 months. So I am satisfied that army planning is in a healthy position and my forecast is that it will continue to increase.
	Recent operations have demonstrated the potency of modern weapons systems. Some 85 per cent. of munitions dropped in Iraq were precision guided compared with 25 per cent. in Kosovo and 11 per cent. in the Gulf war of 1991. The speed of the American advance on Baghdad was an example of how the concept of overmatching power has replaced that of overwhelming force, but technological advances, however effective, cannot make up for insufficient numbers on the ground, and no one can be in two places at once.
	Stabilisation operations and peace support operations require a large number of personnel, not high-tech weaponry. The Defence White Paper focuses on how the armed forces can best deliver an expeditionary capability. The Defence Committee is conducting an inquiry into that and will publish its report in due course. I am a little concerned, however, that we risk overlooking the importance of ensuring that we meet the simple requirement of having the large numbers of troops needed to supply the considerable number who endure low-intensity operations.
	The former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Boyce, said in his maiden speech in the other place:
	So we need to remember . . . the low intensity end, where we are for the vast majority of the time with our forces spread thinly around the world as they are today; that however clever the technology, it does not deliver the capability to be in two places at the same time, such as patrolling simultaneously in the Gulf and the south Atlantic. We have not yet cracked the fourth dimension. So, if there is to be a cut in frontline numbers, then no doubt we can also expect to see a cut in commitments. Anything else would be inexplicable to our already fully stretched servicemen and servicewomen.[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2003; Vol. 655, c. 343.]
	We would all agree that we ask a lot of our armed forces and that they never fail to deliver, but we must recognise that what they can do is limited by how many of them there are. So how do we resolve the dilemma of too many commitments and too few people?
	We should, of course, always look to reduce commitments where we can. I support the Government's continuing efforts to encourage our allies, particularly in Europe, to do more, but we must recognise that it is much easier to argue against taking on more commitments in the abstract than to argue against specific proposals when we see the need for them and know that we, and possibly we alone, have the armed forces that could meet that need.
	So should we increase the size of our armed forces? To do so would, of course, require extra resources. Although the Chancellor's statement in the Budget was welcome, it is not realistic to expect the extra funding for defence that would be required to sustain a significant increase in armed forces personnel. Funding is not the only constraint, however. I was struck by what General Sir Michael Walker told us in the Defence Committee. He said:
	I do not think it is realistic to imagine that the demographic base in this country would necessarily support a significant increase in the number of people coming into our armed forces. It would be wrong of any of us, I think, to start lowering standards to increase numbers.
	Even if we could afford it, it is the view of the Chief of the Defence Staff that it is unlikely that we could recruit significantly greater numbers to the armed forces without an unacceptable lowering of standards. My first conclusion is that we have to work with what we have got. We should of course continue to look for ways to improve our capabilities within those overall limitations, and we should be prepared to restructure our forces so that they are best able to respond to the sort of demands that we expect to make of them.
	My next point is on key enablers, because if our forces are stretched overall, the specific demands that we make of them in some areas become unreasonable and unsustainable. As the Defence Medical Services has already been mentioned, I shall move on from that example in the hope that other Members have a chance to say a little more.
	During Operation Telic there was much public criticism because crucial supplies were not getting through to our front-line forces. As the Committee's report, Lessons of Iraq, spelt out, some of that criticism was justified, but not because the people with day-to-day responsibility for those matters were negligent or careless; rather it was the consequence of there being too few people in key specialties and too little investment in key systems.
	Logistics may not be glamorous, but it is essential. The Defence White Paper recognises that logistics must be seen as a capability in its own right and that it needs reorganisation, not least so as to alleviate the demands on specialist personnel.
	Another example is engineering. The initial deployment to Operation Telic put huge demands on engineering capability. When I and other members of the Committee were in Shaibah last July, in temperatures that were routinely above 50 C, we saw uninstalled air-conditioning units lying around because no engineers were available.
	I want briefly to mention our reserve forces. They were involved in both the combat and peacekeeping phases of Operation Telic and the Defence Committee was impressed with their dedication and their invaluable contribution.
	Operation Telic involved the largest compulsory call-out of reserve forces since the 1956 Suez crisis. Reservists play a critical role in UK military operations, as they provide, in many cases, skills that are not readily available in the regular forces. The medical side provides a specific example; 760 medical reservists were deployed in Operation Telic.
	Being mobilised can put substantial pressure on individual reservists, their families and employers. The Defence Committee is especially concerned that reservists do not lose their jobs as a result of mobilisation. The Chief of the General Staff, Sir Michael Jackson, told the Committee recently that it would be
	a mistake to assume that we could use the reserves at the tempo at which we have been using them over the last year.
	On mobilisation, he said:
	The Reserve Forces Act itself of course says once in every three years, and certainly that is the law, but I personally think that may be a bit too often anyway.
	The Ministry of Defence must consider that point seriously.
	We ask a lot of our armed forces. We put them into situations where they face great personal danger and come under extreme pressure. We also expect them to conduct themselves to high standards and on the overwhelming majority of occasions that is what they do. I have met and spoken to members of the British armed forces all over the world; they are often doing difficult jobs in unpleasant places. I have found them highly professional, committed to the task at hand and fully aware of their responsibilities towards the civilian population.
	I do not intend to discuss the specific allegations against some personnel who have served in Iraq, especially as little time is available, but I welcome the comments of my right hon. Friend the Minister, and the Defence Committee will consider some of those matters in its inquiry into continuing operations. The Committee is also in the early stages of an inquiry into the duty of care towards recruits in all three services. Unfortunately, I do not have time to elaborate on that.
	I end my speech by once again paying tribute to our armed forces, and to the personal sacrificeindeed the ultimate sacrificethey are called on to make in the service of their country. It is Parliament's and the country's responsibility to return their commitment with fair treatment, value and respect and just reward.

Colin Breed: This is indeed a very timely debate in the light of the past few days' events and, in particular, of course, the reports from the ICRC and Amnesty International.
	In the statement on Monday, the Secretary of State for Defence reiterated the need for open and transparent dialogue between the Government and the House. The vast majority of British troops in Iraq are conducting their difficult and dangerous operations to the very highest standards of professionalism in the toughest of conditions. It is right that we have all paid proper tribute to them, both today and on many previous occasions.
	Sadly, it is not unusual for improper behaviour to occur in time of war and conflict, and swift and appropriate action needs to be taken by the proper authorities and overseen by the Government and relevant Ministers. It is vital that Ministers are made aware of all important reports, both internal ones and those provided by external organisations, not only so that action is taken at the earliest opportunity but so that the Government can ensure that they keep the House fully informed of important developments. So I welcome the Secretary of State's statement to the House on Monday, but I remain disappointed by the inadequacy of his response to some of the crucial questions put to him by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
	The Prime Minister yesterday answered questions in a rather similar fashion and insisted that there was no evidence of systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British troops. I think that that is confirmed in the report. He also confirmed that he had not seen the ICRC report until Monday this week, but we know that the report was received by British officials in Baghdad on 26 February. Despite the dialogue between those on the two Front Benches this afternoon, I am still not entirely clear why there was a three-month delay in bringing those very serious allegations to the notice of senior Ministers.
	The Prime Minister's response that the report was not passed to Ministers in February and that he did not know of the allegations of abuse before receiving it was very carefully worded. What was not made clear was whether the Prime Minister was aware of the serious allegations concerning US troops, particularly in respect of Iraqi detainees, and whether he made any representation to President Bush during his recent visit to Washington. As a coalition partner, we surely have every right to know what our partners are doing in the name of the coalition of which we are part and for which we are therefore jointly responsible. But the crucial question remains: why were those reports, which are of obvious political significance, not shown to Ministers and thus not reported to the House?

Richard Younger-Ross: In an earlier intervention, the Minister of State, who has left the Chamber for the moment, indicated that what the US does is nothing to do with him. I should have thought that anything to do with US or the coalition forces was to do with him and ought to be of concern to him. I understand that the Leader of the House stated that what the American forces had done was a stain on the coalition. Does my hon. Friend agree with the Minister of State, who says that that is nothing to do with him, or with the implication of what the Leader of the House said, which is that it is a stain on the coalition and is obviously a matter of concern to the Government?

Colin Breed: All this is a good example of the way in which hairs are being split. Both views are correct in a way, but we have to recognise that, of course, any action by any coalition partner will have implications for all the others. That has been made perfectly clear in recent days.
	If we find that any British troops have broken the Geneva convention or, indeed, any other human rights law, I accept the Minister's assurance that those incidents will be fully investigated and, if proven, those responsible will be appropriately punished.
	The appearance of the black-and-white photographs in the Daily Mirrorthey now appear to be reconstructions or representationshave clearly focused attention on what may be disturbing behaviour by our troops that has been the substance of allegations by the Red Cross and Amnesty International for perhaps more than a year. We can only speculate about the motivation behind those images. There is the motivation of the Daily Mirror in using themit says that it investigated them fullyand the motivation of the people who set the thing up. We were led to believeand I acceptthat they are soldiers, and were named as soldiers A, B and C.

David Borrow: On that specific point, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Daily Mirror should have told the soldiers who came to it with the story to do their duty, see their superior officer and give him full details of the events that they reported?

Colin Breed: I agree entirely that it is right that such actions should be taken before anything of doubtful provenance is published. I want to believe that, although the outcome has been appalling, the motivation of some of the soldiers was honourable. Their action may have been born of frustration following inaction about widely known reports. The way in which the images appeared has been extremely damaging, but we should await the full results of the investigation not only into how those things came to be published but about why they were brought into the public domain.
	The US photographs that have been released demonstrate utterly unacceptable behaviour, and have led to an escalation in violence and tension not only in Iraq but among the wider Muslim population of the region. Already, in the past few days, we have seen the appalling and barbaric decapitation of a US civilian, which has shocked people the world over and has shown that even allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners can lead to direct retaliatory violence. It is therefore vital that the allegations about British troops are precisely defined and kept separate from the US investigations. What is the status of the British investigations and when will the results be made public? No criminal proceedings have been initiated as yet, but what disciplinary action has been taken against troops in Iraq found to have acted improperly. The Red Cross report states that a commanding officer handed back the body of Baha Mousa to his family in a dreadful state and apologised, assuring them that those responsible would be brought to justice. Compensation was paid, perhaps as admittance that the Army might be liable in the judgment of Army lawyers. Why has it taken so long to reach a judgment? Speed is of the utmost importance to calm fears and restore reputations as quickly as possible. We should not let these things fester in communities. Why did the family of Baha Mousa feel the need to bring another case against the MOD in the UK courts?
	The allegations have dealt a serious blow to the coalition's efforts to win over the Iraqi people. As part of the coalition, our troops are inevitably identified with those of the US. The ICRC report makes no distinction between coalition forces, and was given at the outset to the US command. Regrettably, we are tarred with the same brush when allegations of abuse are made. Shame falls equally on UK and US forces, regardless of the extent of abuses by either side. The MOD has said that the European convention on human rights does not apply in Iraq, so can the Minister tell us what human rights law does apply there? In particular, does the international covenant on civil and political rights, to which Iraq is a party, apply? Can the Minister assure the House that his Government are doing everything possible to ensure the observance of human rights in all coalition operations in Iraq and that there are clear channels of communication between coalition partners for any alleged breaches of human rights law to be raised, including direct reference to Ministers?
	Can the Minister confirm the rumours of the possible deployment of more British troops to Iraq? In particular, can he confirm that the US has requested British troops to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of Spanish troops? Can he confirm that additional UK troops will be deployed only on the specific request of UK commanders, and that they will be used exclusively to reinforce our own troops on the ground in the southern sector, and will not be used to bolster US forces in areas such as Falluja or Najaf?
	Whatever happens regarding the future deployment of more British troops, we must ensure the continued protection and support of our troops currently stationed out in Iraq. With 30 June only a few weeks away, the Government must surely have determined their political and military strategy for the post-30 June handover. If additional troops are to be deployed, will the Minister tell us on what basis and on what conditions such troops will be made available? It is also not too early for coalition partners to consider their exit strategy, as was mentioned earlier, and in particular what role the United Nations may play in assisting that process.
	Events in the past few weeks have seriously undermined coalition efforts to achieve the original objectives. Of course, we all want Iraq to become a peaceful, stable and secure state within which reconstruction can take place safely and speedily, but that all seems a very long way off now. It is far from clear how the original objectives will be achieved in the short to medium term, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that our troops may have to remain for far longer than was anticipated, which will have a significant effect not only on the MOD's budget but on the overstretch of our forces, which has been highlighted again this afternoon. At the earliest opportunity the Government must present clear proposals to enable the House to debate fully an increasingly worrying situation.

Gavin Strang: Like some hon. Members in the Chamber this afternoon, including the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed), I was opposed to the war in Iraq. I was one of the 219 Members of the House of Commons who last March concluded that the case for war against Iraq had not been established, especially given the absence of specific UN authorisation. However, that is not to say that I do not recognise the arguments of those who, like the Government and the official Opposition, supported the military action.
	I understand and respect the position of people who take a pacifist approach to international politics. I also understand and respect those who adopt an isolationist position, but I have never been a pacifist and I am not an isolationist. I agree with the Ministry of Defence White Paper published in July 1998 that Britain and our armed forces should aim to be a force for good in the world.
	When the conclusions of the strategic defence review were published in that White Paper, it cannot have been possible to predict that the active deployments of our forces in subsequent years would have been so many and so diverse, including the operations in East Timor, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq, and the work that we asked them to do in Northern Ireland. The Government published a new chapter to the defence review following the atrocities of 11 September 2001.
	If there was ever any question in my mind that our armed forces personnel were overstretched, that question was answered just two weeks ago. I had the opportunity to meet members of the Royal Scots Regiment who were on parade in my constituency, and I spoke with the soldiers who have been at the sharp end of operations, and with the NCOs and officers. They marched through Musselburgh with many people lining the pavements to watch thema very impressive sight.
	One of the advantages of such an event is that it gives not just members of the public, but councillors and Members of ParliamentI am the local Member of Parliamentthe chance to talk directly to the men and get an insight into some of the difficulties and challenges they face. They were very positive about the supply of equipment and materials. They did not complain about the lack of supplies, as has been instanced in the past. They mentioned only that they would like more sets of night goggles. The thing that struck me was that some of the soldiers had missed four Christmases in a row. These young people, many with young families, were facing the possibility of a fifth Christmas away from home. The Royal Scots had been in Northern Ireland in 2000 and 2001, in Bosnia in 2002 and in Iraq in 2003. They were marching through Musselburgh, having just returned from Iraq. It is unacceptable and unreasonable to ask our people to join the services on the basis that they will have so little time, particularly at Christmas, with their families and loved ones.
	The working arrangement in the MOD is, I understand, that after six months of operations there should be 24 months back home to recover, train and get back up to speed before another operation, usually overseas. The Royal Scots will be on call from November to go back to Iraq, but that announcement was before the recent speculation that we might be deploying additional troops to Iraq. What I am saying is not unique to the Royal Scots; it applies to other regiments as well. That is the demand that we are placing on our personnel.
	The Minister of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire), who is a member of the Defence Committee, rightly drew attention to the fact that numbers in the armed services are rising, which has to be good newsbut I would suggest that it is probably not good enough. If we are to continue to ask our service personnel to intervene on the scale envisaged by the Government, we must substantially increase the military budget and expand the size of the armed forces, particularly the British Army, if we are to become involved in the sort of international action in which we have been involved recently.
	Other Members want to speak and time is running out so, in conclusion, I wish to return to the issue of Iraq. The House is aware that the occupation authorities are due to hand sovereignty to a caretaker Government in Iraq by the end of next month. No one would suggest that that interim Government would have day-to-day command over coalition forces. However, I note that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said yesterday that it would be for that Government to decide whether foreign forces should remain on their soil. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday that the people of Iraq say, first, that they are delighted that Saddam Hussein has been overthrown and, secondly, that they want the coalition forces to leave Iraq as soon as possible.
	As I have said in the past, it is my view that the British Government should adopt a policy of replacing the coalition forces occupying Iraq with a force authorised by the United Nations.

Peter Viggers: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me a chance to follow the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East and Musselburgh (Dr. Strang), who always speaks with careful thought and sincerity.
	I count myself as fortunate, having served in the Air Force and in the Territorial Army, and then having served on the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Act 2001, the House of Commons Defence Committee and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, all of which gave me the opportunity to study the armed forces at first hand.
	I believe that we have the best armed forces in the worldand I say that not simply because I represent a services constituency and know so many people in the armed forces. I know from people from other NATO countries that our British forces are held in high regard. Those forces will be the very first to demand the most rigorous inquiry into the allegations made of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. They will have been as shocked as we are that these events appear to have happened and that they happened on the Government's watch, with no one seemingly knowing they were going on.
	I will start at the top, which is always a good place to start. I think our leading commanders benefit enormously from the Royal College of Defence Studies, which takes people in at the level of captain, colonel or group captain, and takes a number of civilians and a large number of foreign students. At the highest level, it gives our senior commandersbefore their appointment to the top levelsthe opportunity to broaden themselves and means that our top officers are civilised and thoughtful. We are very well led at the top and our senior commanders are indeed of the very highest quality. Similarly, at the staff college at Shrivenham, more junior ranks at the level of major and equivalent learn about joint operations and about the realities of war. They learn, as all junior ranks do, how crucial it is that they should understand and endure fear before they reach the front line.
	In saying that our forces are the best in the world, if I had to base my claim on one simple fact, it would be that our non-commissioned officers have a level of leadership and an ability to take the initiative that often do not exist in the armed forces of other services. If one goes on a small patrol in Northern Ireland or Bosnia and Herzegovina that is led by a lance corporal or a corporal, one realises the extent of the demands that are made of junior ranks at that level. Our junior ranks are fully capable of taking that responsibility, and I single out that aspect as the most important of all those that make our armed forces the best in the world.
	On the recruitment and training of junior ranks, the Select Committee on Defence is currently studying recruitment and training under the title Duty of care. I was impressed recently when I read a reappraisal of initial training produced by the director of operational capability. The document talked about creating a climate in which there was a more congenial and balanced training environment. Over 20 years ago, such words would not have been used. It was certainly the view then that the object of recruitment and training the junior ranks was to break a man's spirit and rebuild it in the spirit of the unit. Now, that does not work at all. People are trained on the basis of having been encouraged in their earlier education to think for themselves. Officers in the Army, Navy and Royal Air Forcewe have recently had the opportunity to meet personnel from all three services to discuss this matterall say that the quality and standard of recruits nowadays make things much more challenging, as they have been taught to think for themselves. It is no longer possible simply to order a man to do things; one needs to explain what is to be done.
	The service ethos is also different. Discipline and order remain important, and people are now trained to achieve similar military standards to those that have always existed, but that is happening in a changing world in which standards in civilian life are not the same as those of the military. The process is therefore much more demanding for service personnel, who need to be trained to use force and violence and to understand that they will need to kill if that is required, yet, at the same time, the world in which they are operating is a changing and rather softer and quieter one. The demands on trainers are therefore greater than ever before.
	I turn now to some individual personnel issues. Reference has been made to the Defence Medical Services, which are dangerously under strength. We have only about a third of the required strength in several of our key facultiesanaesthetics, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery and general medicine. We have been extremely fortunate in recent wars and warlike events, as casualties have not been as great as might have been feared. I believe that we are seriously overstretched, and when I challenged the Minister to explain the effect of cancelling the Royal College of Defence Medicine at Selly Oak hospital in Birmingham, he gave me a most unsatisfactory answer. The fact is that, having planned to focus defence training in Birmingham at a new site at Selly Oak hospital, there appears not to be a plan B to provide proper education and accommodation facilities for the personnel who will serve there.

Ivor Caplin: The hon. Gentleman has made that accusation twice this afternoon. I assure him and the House that plans do not exist to close the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, as he alleges. We are committed to delivering a military medical centre of excellence at the RCDM in Birmingham, which is our aim and expectation.

Peter Viggers: The accommodation centre, mess facilities, sporting facilities and offices that would have comprised the centre of the RCDM have been cancelled. Staff in Birmingham have been left in inadequate bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and that point is confirmed in a parliamentary answer from the Under-Secretary. Some staff live in accommodation that was originally intended for people without housing, and a large number of them stay in a Young Women's Christian Association hostel. I challenge the Minister to deny that there are no plans to change the situation.

Ivor Caplin: I do not know the parliamentary answer to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I refer him to a parliamentary answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson):
	We are currently exploring, in consultation with industry, a number of options for the development of domestic accommodation and the move of all remaining medical training and other functions to Birmingham. Planned costs and potential savings remain subject to evaluation of, and final decisions on, the various options.[Official Report, 22 April 2004; Vol. 420, c. 660W.]
	The project has clearly not been cancelled, and it would be helpful for our people who work in Defence Medical Services if the hon. Gentleman were to cease making that allegation.

Peter Viggers: The project has been cancelled. When the rear-admiral responsible for it resigned, the vice-chief of the defence staff said, I can understand why you have resigned from the Navy. The allegation is serious, and it has not been answered.
	The digital clock is playing amazing games, and I need to rely on the old-fashioned steam clock, which states that I have two minutes rather than the five minutes 36 seconds stated by the new digital clock. I shall shape my remarks accordingly.
	In some cases, accommodation for armed forces is below standard, and I was pleased to hear the Minister of State say that that problem is being addressed. I readily admit that the problem is long standing, but some unmarried personnel are accommodated in inadequate premises.
	The constraint on time is heavy, so I shall simply say this in conclusion: the armed forces offer a range of careers with the training and experience to enable servicemen and women to fulfil their roles. As those skills are also transferable, they equip servicemen and women to face civilian life with confidence.

David Borrow: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this afternoon's debate. I represent South Ribble in Lancashire and I live only a few hundred yards away from the headquarters of both the Queen's Lancashire Regiment at Fulwood barracks and Kimberley barracks, where the Territorial Army regiment is based.
	I have a lot of contact and dealings with the Queen's Lancashire Regiment. From speaking to people in the regiment, and to the extended family of people who have served in the past and those whose family members serve in the regiment, I know how upset and annoyed they have been by the recent comments and photographs in the Daily Mirror.
	The Queen's Lancashire Regiment has a long and distinguished reputation, which goes back to 1782. In 1970, three regimentsthe East Lancashire Regiment, the South Lancashire Regiment and the Loyal Regimentmerged to form the Queen's Lancashire Regiment. Throughout its history, soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment have been awarded a total of 18 Victoria crosses.
	I was in Basra in early June, a few weeks before the change of regiments, when the 1st Battalion the Queen's Lancashire Regiment went out to Basrait arrived in the middle of June and stayed until the middle of November. About 600 servicemen and women were with the regiment, including 100 members of the Territorial Army. When I met members of the regiment on their return, they were proud of their hard work, the schools and police stations that had been reopened, the number of police officers who had been trained and the improved public services. There is very little hint of anything going wrong during that period.
	I am experienced and grown-up enough to realise that, if 600 servicemen and women are put in a dangerous situation thousands of miles from home, not every one of them will behave perfectly and that there will be incidents that require investigation. However, what has upset the people of Lancashire so much is the use on the front page of the Daily Mirror of the fake photographs that have cast doubt on the integrity and honour of everyone who has served in that regiment. As politicians and people in public life, we realise that our media are players in that arena and will manipulate and cherry-pick the news to make a political point and we take it for granted because it is part of the rough and tumble of politics. But ordinary families who have been upset by newspapers cannot understand how they can fabricate stories that hurt and damage their integrity. It is an absolute disgrace that the Daily Mirror has been prepared to besmirch the name of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment to further its own political line and damage the Prime Minister.
	People in Lancashire would like the Daily Mirror to answer several questions. What did the Daily Mirror say when allegations were first made to it about incidents in Iraq? Did it say to those servicemen, or so-called servicemen, You ought to report these things to officers in the MOD or your regiment so they can be investigated? When they first made their allegations, did they appear at the door of the Daily Mirror with photographs in hand, or did they, as is rumoured, appear without photographs, then return some days later having mysteriously discovered photographs to support their story? Did the Daily Mirror pay for those photographs? Has the Daily Mirror profited from the sale of those photographs to media outlets across the world? Has the Daily Mirror any idea of the danger in which it has put our troops around the world by the publication of those fabricated pictures?
	I spoke to members of the QLR this morning. I could demand the resignation of the editor of the Daily Mirror, but the very minimum that people involved with the regiment want is for the Daily Mirror to apologise, on the whole of its front page, for fabricating a story that has so wilfully damaged and besmirched the name of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment.

Bernard Jenkin: I am sure that all hon. Members will have great sympathy with the questions that the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) wants to put to the Daily Mirror and I hope that the people concerned will read his words in Hansard and act upon them.
	Every hon. Member who has spoken today has spoken highly of the armed forces. I regularly meet the men and women of 16 Air Assault Brigade, who are based in Colchester, around which my constituency sits, and whose circumstances, tasks and challenges are inseparable from the situation in Iraq and the general international situation that we face. It is inexcusable that our armed forces should find themselves in a situation whereby they are exposed in conflict apparently without any coherent plan, as in Iraq today. What is the plan? Is there a plan? Nobody can say.
	The history of Conservative Members' support for the removal of Saddam Hussein is clearly on the record, but also on the record is our consistent, persistent and continuing questioning of Her Majesty's Government, both before and after the conflict, about the coherence and viability of post-conflict planning. After the conflict, on 4 July, I presented a paper to the shadow Cabinet in which I wrote:
	Post-conflict Iraq is clearly not progressing as well as expected, leaving the UK's overstretched armed forces in an increasingly invidious position.
	I pointed out that we needed, A coherent policy, which,
	would be to adopt a 'road map' based upon the successful implementation of peace and security,
	in such theatres as the Balkans. I continued:
	Our main charge against the government is,
	the Prime Minister's,
	failure to engage with US post-conflict planning before and since the conflict, leaving the UK armed forces in an increasingly invidious position.
	I added:
	Currently, all the elements for protracted insurgency warfare exist, though there is every opportunity to prevent the situation deteriorating, if clear direction is provided to the,
	coalition provisional authority,
	now. Otherwise, it is just a matter of time before an anti-occupation organisation emerges, gains support from a discontented population and starts organising 'resistance' much more effectively.
	Sadly, those words, which I wrote on 4 July, have turned out to be all too true. The key question that the Government must now address is this: do they now accept that the coalition is fighting a major counter-insurgency war in Iraqit is not peacekeepingwhich is part of a global counter-insurgency war?
	The principles of counter-insurgency warfare are not new. They have been established, discovered and practised by the British armed forces throughout the world for many years. They are to secure one's home base, which is why we have talked so much about homeland security, and to deny the enemy a secure base, which is why we threw out the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. They are also to plan and generate military activity based on the best human intelligence about the enemy that one can gather and to remove the underlying political grievances through reconstruction and the settlement of disputes. Another principle is to co-ordinate all one's actions to a coherent strategic plan with all one's partners, which underlines the importance of transatlantic co-operation for the future of Iraq, that we cannot let the Americans do it on their own and nor should our European partners seek to leave them to do it on their own. That also underlines the importance of NATO, and raises the question of why NATO is not taking a strategic role in co-ordinating a single, strategic plan. We must also remember that counter-insurgency warfare is a battle for hearts and minds and that the conflict is about the will to win, and the will to succeed, not about the use of physical force. That means that we must remember that actions and words, including the technical, have immeasurable political and strategic consequences. We need to avoid doing things that create propaganda opportunities for the enemy to feed grievances and enmity. That means that a counter-insurgency campaign must stay within the law and only use proportionate force as a last resort.
	In Iraq, I fear that we are acting on very limited and poor intelligence. The actions that we have seen publicised on screens around the world recently are fuelling grievances. The disputes and splits in the coalition are disabling any coherence of a plan. There is a clash of military doctrines, a failure to win hearts and minds and too much resort to forcenot on the part of our armed forces but certainly on that of others. There is a failure to understand the strategic impact of words and actions. That point relates directly to prisoners and their treatment.
	Any mistreatment of prisoners in the hands of the coalition is a matter for the whole coalition. That is why it is inexplicable that the International Committee of the Red Cross report was not a matter of instant concern to Ministers as soon as it became available to the coalition. The pictures endanger the entire strategy. They are petrol on the flames of Islamic opinion. They are a propaganda gift to the terrorists. Al-Qaeda could not have planned it more effectively.
	In Iraq and in the middle east, we now face the prospect of real strategic failure. For all the success, skill and commitment of our armed forces and other members of the coalitionand the Americansfor all their forbearance in the face of real danger and for all the progress made in political and physical reconstruction in Iraq, we are in danger of throwing it all away through the coalition's failure to understand the fundamental principles required of a counter-insurgency campaign.
	This is the question that the Government must face: what is the coalition plan to defeat terrorism and insurgency in Iraq? Are the Government effectively engaged with US policy making? I fear that not only have they made a mess of UK post-war planning for Iraq, but there is a persistent and ongoing failure to engage with the US Administration on the strategic direction of the coalition, in areas in which we have so much more experience and so much more to offer than the Americans currently seem to appreciate.
	In a Daily Telegraph interview earlier this week Sir Jeremy Greenstock, formerly the Prime Minister's ambassador to Iraq, mentioned that we have 5 per cent. of the say in what happens in the coalitionalthough we provided 20 per cent. of combat power on the ground during the conflict. For all the Prime Minister's personal popularity in Washington, it is horribly clear that either his influence there is negligible or that he has failed and continues to fail to understand the true nature of the challenge of what is required to win the peace and good government for the people of Iraq, what is required for our own peace and security in the years ahead and what is required for the safety of those who serve so gallantly in the towns and villages and the streets and fields, of Iraq.

Nigel Beard: I worked closely with the British Army for 12 years, and know it to be the best-trained, most skilled and most disciplined military force in the world. That character and capability have been displayed in Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone and Kosovo, and twice in Iraq. It is a humane, confident and professionally effective force of which, with good reason, Britain can be proud.
	That reputation should be in no way diminished by the media's treatment of reports from Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross, as though they were an indictment of military personnel serving in Iraq. Those reports have been cynically used to imply some association of the British armed services with the very serious evidence of abuse and humiliation of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison. Let us say on every possible occasion, loud and clear, that there is absolutely no evidence of any systematic or widespread mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British forces.
	The 33 known cases of Iraqi civilian deaths, injuries or ill-treatment have been investigated by the Royal Military Policebecause the Army itself identified them as needing investigation, not because they were responding to either the Amnesty or the Red Cross report. Of those investigations, 12 are continuing and 21 have been completed, with 15 findings of no case to answer. In the other six cases, the findings are still being considered.
	The Amnesty report published this week involves 37 cases of Iraqis killed in accidents witnessed by or involving UK forces. The Ministry of Defence is now trawling through its records to identify what was involved in those incidents. Such investigations, using established military procedure, do not reflect an organisation indifferent to the welfare of the civilian population or tolerant of soldiers who are careless in the use of their weapons.
	I have yet to see a newspaper article attempt to set any such case against the backcloth of events that soldiers are experiencing. Colleagues have been killed; they may themselves being fired on at the next street corner. A mob may be jeering, and it may be difficult to see what is going on. There are undoubtedly hostile forces at large attempting to create disorder, destruction and despair. In that climate of uncertainty and fear, people will make mistakes. They may do things in the heat of the moment that in calmer times they regret. That is the nature of military operations. Incidents like these must be judged against that background, not against abstract standards of model behaviour. Those are the considerations that the Royal Military Police are best able to bring to the investigation.
	Both the Red Cross and Amnesty, in the role reflected in their reports, contribute to sustaining the high reputation of our armed forces. They are independent and strive to be objective in what they report. That is more than can be said for much of the media reporting and comment on them. Too much of that has been an attempt to establish the guilt of British forces by association with what went on in Abu Ghraib prison. The most culpable example of that, which we have already spoken of this afternoon, was in the Daily Mirror, which promoted its indictment with those fake photographs and interviews with anonymous soldiers, which were no more than the regurgitation of stories that had already been investigated, or were recycled from newspaper stories earlier in the year. What valiant and fearless journalism.
	Do those responsible for that ever stop to wonder how the parents at home feel when their sons and daughters are risking their lives but are, by implication, defamed as brutalised and undisciplined? Those are the same men and women who have brought drinking water and electricity supplies to new standards in Iraq, who have helped to establish schools and hospitals and to train civilian police, and who have brought in elected local councillors. Not only has press reporting been an unfair indictment of men and women who do great credit to Britain; the climate of crisis that it has created encourages and emboldens the extremists to greater violence and hostility.
	Generating a climate of crisis also serves many of those who opposed intervention in Iraq from the beginning, or who otherwise see some political advantage to be gained from the present situation. It is that which leads to the phoney shock horror at the fact that the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Defence became aware of the Red Cross report only recently. The flood of issues of all kinds relating to Iraq and many other topics does not require the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State to deal with everything personally. They must ensure that there are clear lines of accountability and responsibility for action to be taken, and those arrangements exist. The Red Cross report cases had been investigated, and the Amnesty cases either had been investigated or were about to be. Those who allege that the reports should have been immediately sent to the top should tell us what they would have expected the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State to do that was not already being done.
	There is no more motive behind that line of argument than an attempt to create a public impression that the Government are not in control.

Bernard Jenkin: The question that I would have expected the Secretary of State for Defence or the Foreign Secretary immediately to ask the American Administration is, How on earth are we going to handle this when it comes out? That is the damage that has been done, and it is the fact that the American Administration seem to be coming from so far behind on this issue, as do we, that has sullied the reputation of the entire coalition administration and poisoned the Arab world against us even more.

Nigel Beard: So the actionable matter was an indictment of the United Statesa power for which we have no responsibility whatever.
	The whole episode, as that intervention suggests to a degree, is being exploited to gain political advantage. Let us just look at the troubled waters in which the cynical opportunists are fishing. We are within two months of sovereignty being passed to an Iraqi Government who, six months later, will hold elections for the whole of Iraq. The extremists do not want either of those things to happen. Iraqi sovereignty removes a grievance that they can exploit on the streets, and democracy forecloses any attempt to install an Islamic state. There are numerous sects and cults, including al-Qaeda, with an incentive to try to prevent that progress by creating disorder and fear. These are bound to be difficult days for our troops in Iraq and anxious times for all who want to see a decent, democratic state emerge after Saddam Hussein's 30 years of tyranny.
	Those who are dealing with that situation deserve our support, not the distraction of the fabricated indignation and opportunist hoo-hah that we have witnessed from the press and from Opposition parties in this House, including frequently this afternoon.
	It is not just that our troops deserve better than that; so do the people of Iraq. They want a settled future in a democratic state, with an economy generating jobs and opportunities. To those such as the Liberal party, who have gone on pretending that there is no exit strategy for our troops, I would reply that that aspiration alone defines the exit strategy. It is to create the conditions whereby that kind of society can grow in Iraq.
	Both the British and the American forces have made huge strides to establish those foundations, through the civil works programmes, the establishment of local democracy, and the training of police and local officials. The vast majority of people in Britain have barely heard any of that positive news. They have been given a diet of death, disaster and scandal, with scarcely a word about the progress on reconstruction.
	Now, that negative picture is being elaborated to create an impression that all is chaos, that things are moving backwards, that all efforts were foolish and in vain and that the best thing we could do would be to withdraw British and American forces. Even sensible reports from the Red Cross and Amnesty are being prayed in aid of that false I told you so assessment.
	This is not a time when our troops in Iraq should be distracted by a partisan propaganda war at home. They need all their skills and personal qualities to deal with the difficult period ahead, up to and after the end of June. The Iraqi people want them to succeed for the sake of their future too. We want them to succeed. No one can gain if Britain or America appears to lose its nerve at home at this crucial time.

Adam Price: I shall concentrate on what the Secretary of State, in his characteristically opaque manner, has referred to as some of the process issues associated with the subject that we are discussing. The process has been deficient; certainly it has been an arduous task trying to extract information on this subject from the Government through parliamentary questions. If the Government had acted with greater candour and a greater sense of urgency, the collateral damage that we are suffering now because of the allegations against America would have been minimised with regard to the British forces. It is a great shame that they did not.
	I have at present 10 parliamentary questions to which I have not had a reply, some of which date back to February. Indeed, to one question I had a holding reply on 28 November, and received the letter that was promised at the end of March, after constantly bombarding the Minister of State's office with telephone inquiries asking where it was. That is no way for us as parliamentarians to have to try to hold the Government to account on any issue, let alone one as important as this.
	Even more worrying is the fact that some of the replies that we have received have not been complete, and some of them have not proved to be correct. I asked whether the Government were aware of any complaints made by the Iraqi interim governing council about alleged human rights violations by coalition forces, and the answer was that they were not. Yet the Iraqi Human Rights Minister, Abdel Basset Turki, made a public statement in November saying that he was very concerned about that very subject, and he had several meetings with Paul Bremer.
	The reply to another of my questions was more worrying still. I asked about the number of fatalities that were under investigation, and on 19 January I was given a list of names. Yet we read in the Amnesty International report about the death of Ghanem Kadhem Kati, who was shot in the back outside his home on 1 January. Why was that name not included in the parliamentary reply? The Government say now that the investigation was ongoing at that time, and there was an interview with the Royal Military Police.
	I asked a further question following a press report about the alleged shooting of a demonstrator by British forces in Basra on 4 October.
	The Minister said:
	On 4 October, on the periphery of a demonstration, British soldiers killed an Iraqi gunman in self-defence. His automatic weapon and ammunition were recovered.[Official Report, 6 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 235W.]
	We read in the Amnesty International report of the death of Hilal Finjan Salman on 4 October. [Interruption.] The Minister of State is smiling while I am recounting the death of an innocent man who was actually protecting a girls' school. He had been employed for 35 years as a guard for al-Maqal girls junior high school, and was licensed to carry a weapon to protect the school. He was required to wear a luminous orange jacket, but neither the British Army nor the Iraqi authorities had issued him with such a jacket. He was the gunman whom the Minister of State told me was shot, thereby dismissing the death of that innocent man. Hilal Finjan Salman's son has applied for compensation, but according to the Amnesty International report he has heard nothing from the British authorities.
	There has been a lot of talk about apologies. Will the Minister of State apologise to the family of that man, who was wrongfully killed while doing his job protecting a girls' school in Basra? The Minister of State has dismissed what happened in an incorrect parliamentary answer to me.

Harry Barnes: Is it not important to establish the standing of Amnesty International? The Labour party made considerable use of such reports in connection with developments in South Africa, for instance, and sought to proceed along the lines of those reports. I was very disappointed, in that the Minister of State seemed to place little significance on the Amnesty International reports; indeed, he almost seemed to put them on a par with those in the Daily Mirror. All of us would criticise that newspaper's approach.

Adam Price: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, and I shall give him an example of what happened under a previous Labour Government. Following an Amnesty International report by Dr. Rastgeldi on alleged torture at the Fort Morbat interrogation centre in Aden in the summer of 1966, the then Labour Government set up their own independent inquiry into those allegations, which led to the Bowen report. When allegations were made about alleged mistreatment in internment when the subsequent Conservative Government were in office, they commissioned two independent reports: the Compton report of November 1971, and the 1972 Parker report. So the Government are departing from established precedent. When widespread allegations are made of mistreatment and human rights violations by British forces, the Government should institute a general independent inquiry in order to establish the facts.
	Police investigations into individual incidents are taking place, in order to get at the facts and to assess the innocence or guilt of those accused. But we also need a general inquiry, so that policy lessons can be learned in respect of the very process issues to which reference has been made. For example, we were told that the practice of hooding was outlawed by legal directives on military interrogation, given in August 1972 and in the following year. Yet that practice was ongoing between April and September of last year. Why was the illegal practice of hooding, which may have contributed to the death of Baha Mousa, allowed to continue? [Interruption.] The Minister of State says that it was not allowed to continue, but British Red Cross officials said that they had a meeting a year ago with British Army commanding officers in Basra, at which those officers admitted that hooding had been going on. They promised a review, but why did that review of an illegal practice take until September to be implemented? If the Government are not prepared to answer those questions, we need an independent inquiry to get at the truth. The Minister knows that the UN Committee against Torture and the European Court of Human Rights have declared hooding to be a degrading and inhuman treatment. That is in addition to the practice being illegal in British law. The Minister must explain why that practice was allowed to continue for six months.

Kevan Jones: First, I associate myself with all hon. Members who have paid tribute to the armed forces this afternoon. For the last three years, I have been privileged to be a member of the Defence Committee, which brought me into regular contact with the men and women in our armed forces. Last year, I also took part in the armed forces parliamentary scheme with the Royal Marines. I never cease to be amazed by the professionalism and dedication of some very young people whom we ask to perform a range of tasks to protect our society and make it a safer place.
	I also associate myself with those who have condemned acts of torture and the degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq. However, I believe that we should distinguish clearly between what the Americans have done and the treatment of prisoners in British-controlled hands. Many people and media make the mistake of not making that distinction. I would be the first to criticise the Government if action had not been taken against the perpetrators or if the accusations had not been properly investigated, but I am reassured by what I have heard.
	We could debate the issue of condemning the Daily Mirror. If what the Minister said today is true and the pictures are false, I do not see how anyone could support what the newspaper did. Irrespective of that, however, the damage done to the coalition branda term used by the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson)in the Arab world is immeasurable. Those people on the Arab street in the middle east who wish to perpetuate radical forms of Islamic terrorism are using the pictures as a recruiting tool. That will be a long-lasting problem, which the people responsible for printing them should take into account in the future.
	I had the privilege last year of visiting both Iraq and Afghanistan. I know that some of my hon. Friends disagreed with the war in Iraq and I respect their right to hold that position. I voted in favour of military action in Iraq. It was a very difficult decision to takeperhaps one of the most difficult in my lifebecause it meant people were going to die. It may not be popular to say it now, but I still think that it was the right decision.
	During my visits to Iraq and Afghanistan last year I met some dedicated men and women who were working hard to bring about a better future for those countries. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Beard) that much of the good work that they doin infrastructural work, rebuilding hospitals and so forthis being wholly unreported. I met some people in Kabul who were doing that work in their own time, because they were dedicated to bringing about a better life for the people who live there. We should recognise the work of such people, which would help to bring about more balance in the debate.
	I hope that over the next few weeks the media will report some of the good news stories about those people who are working, I have to say, sometimes in very difficult and dangerous circumstances. That applies to military personnel, people in the Department for International Development and in the Foreign Office. If we do only one thing today, we should say a big thank you to those people whom we politicians ask to do things on our behalf. Sometimes we cynically sit back and think that it is easy for them.

David Kidney: They also serve who provide the logistics support to our front-line forces. Members of the logistics services also risk their lives: for instance, members of the logistics wing at Stafford have provided the lorry convoys from the port of Umm Qasr to Basra.
	I have also seen the huge logistics effort going on in this country. Staff at MOD Donnington and RAF Stafford, which make up the north centre of the Defence Storage and Distribution Agency, have made a fantastic effort to keep the supply chain going, both during the ramp-up to the beginning of Operation Telic and in the year since.
	The units at Donnington and Stafford have been required to work together and are a model of tri-service working. They perform 2.5 million transactions a year, and keep safe assets worth as much as 6 billion at any one time. It is a tremendous operation, achieving 40 per cent. efficiency savings as it goes on and employing about 1,000 people overall.
	There is talk in the logistics service about the possible privatisation of our supply chain, but the people to whom I am referring deserve credit for the work that they do. They also deserve security in their work. I point out that when contracts break down in the commercial world, there is a right to sue in the courts. In contrast, when a contract breaks down in the industry that provides our military forces, it is people's lives that are at risk.

Julian Brazier: After an unpromising start by the Minister of State, the debate has been of high quality. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire) gave us a lot to think about in connection with manpower overstretch, and she emphasised the need to recognise the central importance of logistics to any military operation.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) stressed the quality of our junior commanders in the British armed forces. The hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) placed on record some remarks about the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, and its disgusting treatment by the Daily Mirror. I think that the whole House will have agreed with him. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) gave us some very wise thoughts on the failures in post-conflict planning. I agreed in particular with the sober warning with which the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) ended his speech.
	Let me be clear, so that there is no misunderstandingwe in the official Opposition unreservedly support our troops in Iraq in the difficult and dangerous job that they are doing. Whatever doubts there may have been at the time of the invasion, all responsible commentators accept that we owe it to the Iraqis and to those who have given their lives in the conflict to see the matter through. However, supporting our valiant troops in this time of crisis does not imply any suspension of the task of holding the Government to account.
	My father was a professional soldier and always maintained that, before undertaking any military operation, Britain's armed forces could do little wrong if their first strike was against the British Ministry of Defence. In my naivety, I used to think that he was joking. As Harold Macmillan observed, events are a politician's greatest enemy. In this case, however, events have largely resulted from actions taken by our Government and the Government of our principal ally, America.
	The official Opposition supported the Iraq invasion in the belief that the Government had a clear plan for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. It is now clear that there was not very much of plan. We were assured that cheering crowds would throw flowers, andyes!there were cheering crowds, as we all saw on television. However, there was no follow-up in terms of development. As it has become clear that security had not been planned properly, the cheering crowds have steadily been replaced by baying hordes throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at our soldiers.
	It is evident that the job is going to be much harder and take much longer than was envisaged. Are the forces in Iraq large enough? The 194548 campaign in Palestine took place in a country quite a lot smaller than Scotland, with a population of less than 1 million. Our forces there peaked at 120,000, yet today the coalition has about 160,000 troops to deal with 25 million people in a country twice the area of Great Britain.
	Obviously there are differences, but one cannot help wondering whether, once again, our armed forces are being asked to do more and more, with less and less. A stable, democratic Iraq in the heart of that troubled region would be a wonderful legacy to the Iraqi people and the whole region, but the increasingly long-term commitment involved is making the problems of overstretch in our armed forces worse and worse.
	The Government's published establishment manpower requirement across the three services has been cut by 3,000 since April 2000, yet on 1 January this year we were still 4,000 short of even that reduced target. At least a quarter of our infantry battalions have not been allowed the required time between tours of duty because of manpower shortages. The armed forces review board report of 2003 found that last year more than half of the personnel had to change leave arrangements for service reasons, often losing the holiday packages we take for granted, without receiving compensation. According to the figures, average working hours across the three services has reached the point at which pay for private soldiers, calculated on the number of hours they are on duty in a typical week, is approaching the minimum wage introduced by the Government.
	Let us think of service personnel families, too. Between 1997 and 2001, the divorce rate in the armed forces, which already is much higher than that in the civilian community, increased by nearly half. Imagine how dispiriting it must be to win the war merely to lose it on the home front. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East and Musselburgh (Dr. Strang) made some salient remarks on that subject.
	Canterbury is proud of the locally based Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and, from the regular troops, the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, which are in Iraq. We are also proud of the Territorial Army platoon from the 3rd Battalionthe TA battalionof the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, which is based in my constituency and will be going to Iraq shortly. The truth is, however, that our reserve forces are just as overstretched as our regular forces. The TA has been cut by a third since 1997, with a disproportionate amount of the cuts falling on the infantry and the sappers, the very people we most need in Iraq. The Government have subsequently given the TA infantry the task of heading up the rapid reaction forces for our homeland defence.
	A survey of TA personnel sent to the Gulf found that four fifths did not expect their employer to support any further deployments in peacetime. Some 63 per cent. of medical and technical staff in the TA said that they were thinking of resigning when they got back. In Westminster Hall I put a series of detailed questions, put to me by TA officers, to the Under-Secretary, who is normally a courteous man, and he promised that he would let me have a written answer. They were on the weaknesses in the new TA infantry battalion structure, the fact that the intelligence officers have no staff, and problems with the training regime. I would be grateful if he told me when he is likely to answer those questions.
	In front of the Defence Committee on Wednesday 24 March, General Sir Mike Jackson said:
	This time last year the army was very heavily committed indeed, 50 per cent. plus. That is not sustainable . . . We can take that surge. What we cannot do is sustain it over any length of time.
	That surely is the point. Our forces are being deployed on more and more operations and, in the case of Iraq, it is increasingly clear that we do not know how long they will be there. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson), in his powerful speech, made it clear that if any organisation is stretched hard enough, standards will in the end start to decline, even those in our armed forces.
	Furthermore, the allegations against our troops, and, much more potently, the revolting pictures of certain US soldiers committing those vile acts of human rights abuses, have further endangered the lives of our soldiers. The Minister did not answer most of my hon. Friend's questions. I have just two on that subject for the Under-Secretary. When were the British military authorities first informed of the accusations against American service personnel, and when did they first tell Ministers?

Nigel Beard: What responsibility did they have for the Americans?

Julian Brazier: The Americans are our allies. We are working under their

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We cannot have sedentary interventions or responses to them.

Julian Brazier: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	The truth is that our troops are imperilled by our allies' actions, as several hon. Members said.
	I end with two more questions. The Minister gave a robust answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport. Is it really true that the plans for the centre for military medical excellence based in Selly Oak will go ahead despite the huge shortfalls in medical services; that there is no change of plan and the resignation made no difference?
	My second question is about the largest procurement project in the history of the British Armythe Apache. The Conservative Government ordered it and every machine was delivered, but when will the first squadron be trained and up and running as an operational squadron?
	The Secretary of State has placed great emphasis on the fact that technology will make up for cuts in manpower. The Minister made the same point today. However, since the dawn of time kings and Governments have tended to put more faith in technology than in those who wield it. The lessons are never learned. The Government offer our troops cuts in defence spending. Under a measure that has just left this place, they are making a mean attack on war disabilities claimants, and they are obfuscating over the issue of the Americans and prisoner abuse.
	The Government owe the brave, honourable, professional members of our armed forces better than that.

Ivor Caplin: We have had a good and interesting debate on personnel and I can assure the House that we take very seriously all the issues that have been raised.
	I thank those who contributed to the debate. It is always good to see the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) in our debates on defence. There were contributions from the hon. Members for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) and for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price). Numbers were lacking on the Conservative Back Benches, so I am especially pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire), my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East and Musselburgh (Dr. Strang) and my hon. Friends the Members for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow), for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Beard), for North Durham (Mr. Jones) and for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) were able to make excellent contributions.
	The best contribution today came from my right hon. Friend the Minister of State. In more than 50 minutes, he took more than 15 interventions and answered questions from Members on both sides of the House on all the issues of the day. It was a thoroughly open and transparent contribution, which was certainly welcomed by my hon. Friends and will be welcomed outside the House.
	In this brief winding-up speech, I want to bring the House up to date on two important major legislative matters for our armed forces. The first is the tri-service Bill on which we have been working for some time and which we plan to introduce in 200506, subject to the availability of parliamentary time. It is especially pertinent to the personnel and discipline issues that we have been discussing today. It is a big undertaking, involving detailed discussions with and between the three services, and we are determined to get it right, as I said in a recent continuation order debate.
	Nevertheless, I stress that we are taking an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, approach to reform of service law. The five-yearly armed forces BillsI believe that the hon. Member for Gosport has served on their Standing Committees in the pastare normally remitted to a Select Committee after Second Reading, but I am keen to share our proposals with the House and to have a constructive debate on the key principles underlying them, as well as on the main proposals, in advance of the Bill's publication.
	I have been considering how that might best be done, and can announce that I plan to submit a written memorandum to the Defence Select Committee outlining the progress we have made to date. Shortly, I will write to my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), the Chairman of the Committee, laying out a timetable for the provision of that evidence. That approach will enable the Committee to consider the Bill's main proposals, take evidence as required and report to the House early next year.
	I look forward to the Committee's scrutiny of the work that has been undertaken so far and I am sure that it will benefit from such an open and transparent process. Clearly, such a report from the Select Committee would be available for all Members to see and comment on in due course.

Rachel Squire: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Ivor Caplin: I am afraid that time is against me, but if I can give way later I shall do so.
	The second sphere of legislation is one that concerns many Membersthe hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) has just referred to it: our announcement in the White Paper about the review of reservists' financial assistance. Work is being undertaken as a priority to produce new regulations governing the award of both the reservist standard and hardship awards. At the same time, we also intend to revise the regulations for employer financial assistance and consider the matter that many hon. Members have raised today and during our debate on pensions and compensation last Thursday: the self-employed.
	The Reserve Forces Act 1996 requires consultation with interested parties. To that end, I plan to publish a consultation document before the commencement of the summer recess to seek the views of interested parties. I hope that the House will accept that it is not appropriate for me to state what our proposals might be in advance of that consultation. I can assure Members, however, that the concerns that have been raisedfor instance, by the Defence Committee, reservists and employersare being given great weight in devising the new scheme. Our aim is to introduce the replacement regulations in the autumn of this year.
	During the opening speech, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State raised the issue of training and education, and I want to emphasise that issue in the few moments that are left to me today. Training and education are very important to the performance of our people, as was highlighted in the defence White Paper and further expanded upon in the recently published policy paper, Training and Education in the Armed Forces. May I say how grateful I am to the many Members of both Houses who attended the seminar at the document's launch on 4 May?
	The fact that the Ministry of Defence is one of the largest single providers of training and education in the UK is significant. The policy paper highlights the variety and complexity of the task, the skills agenda against which the Department operates, the realities of the operational environment and the demands that they place on the training system. Most importantly, the paper shows that the MOD is at the forefront of developing skills for the 21st century, while never forgetting the fundamental requirements for servicemen and women to deliver operational capability.
	There has been some debate about Defence Medical Services this afternoon. I intervened on the hon. Member for Gosport to put an end, I hope, to the allegations he has been making. We are actively recruiting in the Defence Medical Services. About 500 more medical and dental officers are currently in the training pipeline. They range from specialist registrarsabout 40 consultants will qualify in the next four yearsto cadets who have just begun their training, two of whom I met when I visited St. Dunstan's recently, where they were on secondment. More than 400 nurses will also complete their training in the same period. Of those currently in training, 267 are at the Defence School of Health Care Studies in Birmingham, where we are progressively moving all our nurse training, and a further 129 are completing their training at the university of Portsmouth.
	I am sorry that I cannot allow my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West to intervene, but I welcome the Defence Committee's continued work on very many issues, including the duty of care inquiry that it has just commenced. I look forward to more discussions with her and her colleagues about medical services.
	With regard to the balance of our armed forces' tours of duty, on 5 April 2004, 21 per cent. of the British Army was deployed on operations, compared with 54 per cent. in late April 2003. I hope that that will start to make a difference.
	I do not have time to go into all the issues that were raised during the debate. In particular, I wanted to have time to discuss in more detail defence housing strategyan important element raised in both the debate and the White Paperbut I fear that I do not have the time to do so today. I want to raise an issue with the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) about his meeting with the Army Families Federation. I wonder whether he apologised during that meeting for the Conservative defence policies in the 1990sfor example, cuts in defence housing, cuts in recruitment and cuts in medical services. My hon. Friends will know the type of cuts that the armed forces can expect if a Conservative Government were ever returned to power, which is very unlikely.
	In conclusion, we owe a considerable debt to our people. Their courage, determination and abilities are making the difference across the world. We are working hard to provide them and their families with the right package of policies and the right support to sustain their efforts. Given their efforts on our behalf, they deserve our very best endeavours at all times. This is a time for the House to show that it always values the work done by our troops. Whether they are regulars, reservists or civilians, all that they seek is our support for their efforts, and I can assure them all that they will have this Government's full support for many years to come.
	It being Six o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Ordered,
	That the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004 (S.I., 2004, No. 1031), dated 1st April 2004, be referred to a Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation.[Mr. Ainger.]

PETITION
	  
	Pneumococcal disease

Keith Vaz: I wish to present a petition on behalf of 3,000 of my constituents in support of a campaign launched by Scott Fewster, headmaster of a school in my constituency. His son Lachlan died from pneumococcal meningitis. If the vaccine Prevnar had been made available, Mr. Fewster and his family believe that the young boy would have survived.
	The petition therefore calls on the Government to provide that vaccine. The petitioners request that the Secretary of State introduce the vaccine Prevnar to combat pneumococcal disease.
	To lie upon the Table.

REGISTRARS AND CIVIL MARRIAGES

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Ainger.]

Stephen Pound: I wish to draw the attention of the House to an issue that will not be new to most right hon. and hon. Members. However, it is of such urgent concern and so deserving of a positive response from the Government that I make no apologies for detaining the House with it this evening.
	Sham or bogus marriages are entered into by coercion, threats, bribes or other mechanisms, almost entirely for the purpose of remaining in the United Kingdom when all normal citizenship application mechanisms have failed. The problem is especially prevalent in London and the south-east, but it is certainly not unique to our part of the world. In fact, of the 80,000 ceremonies conducted annually, the Society of Registration Officers, the professional body that represents registrars throughout England and WalesI am delighted that its patron, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) is here today and can attest to the scale of the problemestimates that one in five marriages celebrated, if that is the word, in a register office are bogus. I am indebted to the respected journalist Lewis Smith of The Times of London who, in an article on 3 May 2004, described some of the appalling situations that arise. Once a marriage has been notified to the registrar, and even if the registrar sees acts such as money changing hands, the putative bride kissing the wrong man or even one of the witnesses, wedding rings that do not fit and grooms unable to remember the name of the person they are about to marry, he or she cannot stop the marriage. It will continue, providing participants with access to the benefits of citizenship of this country.
	I mentioned that bribes are often offered. One registrar said that 3,500 changed hands and one woman admitted that she had asked for a bogus or sham marriage, but was offered a generous discount if she would let the prospective groom sleep with her. She considered that and rejected it.
	The Marriages Act 1836 and later legislation provide grounds on which a registrar can refuse to proceed with a marriage, but only if the couple are too closely related, are of the same gender or one or both of them are already married. Any other circumstances, such as bribes, coercion or threats, are not grounds on which the registrar can stop the marriage.
	Were you to come with me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to the gracious Edwardian building that we call Ealing town hall, which is, sadly, just outside my constituency, but despite that serves a great many of my constituents, you would find in the wedding suite there a superb building, wonderfully gracefully appointed and staffed by excellent highly qualified and skilled staff, but those staff are angry. They are desperately depressed by the present circumstance in which they feel that they are, in effect, colluding with a system of sham and bogus marriages and unable to do anything about it. One of the senior officers estimated to me that, in the past 12 months, about 80 of the marriages that they were asked to celebrate were, in their opinion, bogus.
	If the registrar has severe doubts, he or she can supply all the details to the Home Office investigation section, which is conveniently located in Noble drive, Hayes, also just outside my constituency, but in the other direction. Of the large number of files that have been sent to the Home Office investigation section in the past 12 months, not one has been acknowledged or acted upon. In every one of those cases, a professionally qualified registrar had severe doubts about the validity of the marriage, supplied the information to the Home Office investigation section, and nothing happened.
	I have spoken to LACORSthe local authorities co-ordinators of regulatory serviceswhich discussed the matter at its management committee on 26 March. It confirms that there are significant numbers of potentially bogus types of notices being given, not uniquely but in many cases in London local authorities. It is important to put it on record that one of the extremely unfortunate side effects of the preponderance of bogus marriages is the effect that that has on genuine marriages between British citizens and citizens of other countries, because they often feel compromised by the perception of falseness when someone marries a British citizen. In the majority of cases, as we know, that is not so.
	LACORS feels seriously restricted in its ability to deal with the issue. If the Home Office does respond, as it has in some boroughs, though not in the borough of Ealing, in many cases it is to set up a trap in the register office, with immigration officers present. The prospect of an arrest or detention taking place during a marriage ceremony and somebody being bundled down the steps of the town hall into a waiting black Maria instead of a white Cadillac is deeply regrettable and paints a most unpleasant picture. Registrars do not want to be part of that process. If they have doubts, they want to be able to stop the wedding there and then.
	I accept that the Government are acting on the matter. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made a welcome statement on 22 April, in which, pointing out the action that the Government were taking, he admitted that every time he took a step to address the abuse,
	organised criminals behind the exploitation of normal, legitimate routes find a way round it.
	He was speaking particularly about bogus marriages. He referred to them as a real scandal. I entirely agree.
	Mark Rimmer, who has been appointed by the Government to investigate sham weddings, has interviewed registrars around the country. He found that 9,000 cases a year are reported to the Home Office team, which consists of six people9,000 cases to six people. I now understand why the traffic between Ealing register office and Noble drive, Hayes is one-way.
	Registrars say that, where they have been trying to fend off fake marriages, the threats of official action are, in many cases, empty threats. The cunning, well-organised people operating in such a highly profitable area know that the threats are empty. The Home Secretary said that registrars might be given new powers to refuse to conduct marriages if they believed them to be a sham carried out for immigration purposes. I look to my hon. Friend the Minister for confirmation that that action is being taken. I understand that the Government also intend to designate only certain register offices as authorised for marriages involving foreign nationals. That is greatly to be welcomed if, as I very much hope, that is the case.
	My brief research for this modest contribution to the warp and weft of the national legislative tapestry has led me into some strange areas, in particular, to the Marriage With Foreigners Act 1906. There are those in the House who are familiar with the Act; previously, I was not. The Act contained the right to demand a certificate of no impediment from someone getting married in the UK. It was superseded by the Marriages (Scotland) Act 1977. If someone from the north of Ireland or from Scotland wishes to get married in England, they must produce a certificate of no impediment, which provides, if not a cure, a filter for bogus marriages. However, somebody from within England marrying in Englandwherever the person they are marrying comes fromdoes not need to provide such a certificate.
	In a remarkable fit of generosity, the 1906 Act specifically excludes what subsequently became the Commonwealth countries from the definition of foreigners. It has to be said, regrettably, that Ghana and Nigeria are two countries that provide a large number of people who are considered to be involved in bogus marriages, and are, in some cases, convicted, yet those countries are excluded.
	I realise that there are those in the House who are wiser in the ways of the world than me but, apparently, the Civil Partnership Bill permitted the making of an order in council to allow the issue of certificates of no impediment. Up until then, I thought that the 1906 Act was almost analogous to the Easter Act 1928, which set by statute the day each year on which Easter could falla good piece of legislation, which I am sure was passed with the good will of the House, but it was never implemented, simply because it was outside the authority of this House.
	The 1906 Actit was disapplied in Scotland and superseded by the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977, with which I know my hon. Friend the Minister is familiarwas also provided for by order in council in relation to clauses 175 and 179 of the Civil Partnership Bill. We have legislation that we can use; we could require a certificate of no impediment that would provide the extra filter for false marriages.
	We have a problem at present, in that an extremely skilful, widely respected and professional body of men and women are in despair at what they see as the abuse of the act of marriage as performed by civil register officers in town halls and up and down the country. People are being victimised. My hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) is dealing with some particularly horrific cases where people have been physically threatened, bullied and coerced into undertaking such marriages. We must address the issue and I recognise that the Government take it seriously; I pay credit to them for that. However, we must give the registrars the tools with which to address the problem.
	Where there is a blatant and ludicrous abusewhere money changes hands, the ring does not fit or the wrong person is kissedis it too much to ask to authorise the registrar to stop the process there and then because, in his or her professional opinion, the marriage should not proceed? It could then be referred to the Home Office or to any other agency that we wish. But we must set in train a process whereby we recognise the skill, professionalism and expertise of our registrars and the fact that they are acutely aware that their authority and functions are being abused by people in this way.
	Sham marriages may have a slightly comic aspect, but although there may seem to be something funny about this issue, it is deeply serious. It is organised criminality and it could have severe and horrendous consequences, given the present state of the world and the war on terrorism, if people are allowed to access all the freedoms of this country by an entirely bogus and indefensible route. We have to stop it.
	I am not some starry-eyed romantic who still believes that marriage is such a wonderful institution that nobody would ever corrupt or dilute it, or allow commerce or anything else to interfere with it. Personally, I have been happily married since 1976; I would have got married the year before, but Fulham got to the cup final, and there are certain priorities. I took marriage very seriously, and my wife, judging by her expression most nights, takes it equally seriously. However, the fact remains that, for some people, the institution of marriage is a key to the lock of the United Kingdom, as it allows them access. That is fine; it is all well and good if the marriage in question is real and subsisting, and legal and honestly contracted, but at the present time, far too many marriagespossibly 20 per cent. in my part of the worldare not valid, which taints the whole process.
	We have to address that issue. I am confident that the Government are already doing so, but I would simply ask them to do a little bit more to ensure that certificates of no impediment are introduced, that registrars are given authority and that we continue to give Government time, resources and attention to recognising that we have left registrars out on their own for too long. They have been trying to do an impossible job. They cannot do it, and they need our help. We in this House need to address this issue tonight.

Des Browne: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) on securing this debate, and I thank him for taking this opportunity to highlight an issue that I consider important, as he knows, and that has recently been the subject of some public concern.
	As my hon. Friend pointed outI shall go into more detail laterthis issue has also recently been the subject of a significant and appropriate response from the Government. This is a particularly timely debate, as we have only recently announced a number of steps that we are taking to protect the integrity of our marriage ceremonies. I am grateful for the chance to expand on the recent announcements of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, to which my hon. Friend alluded.
	We already have arrangements in place to help to identify potential abuse of the marriage laws, and to prevent them from being used for the purposes of illegal immigration. Under section 24 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, registrars have a statutory duty to report suspicious marriages to the immigration and nationality directorate. Indeed, we in the Home Office are grateful to registrars such as those in Ealing, who have been prepared to report such marriages to us.
	In 2003, the Ealing register office sent 48 reports of suspicious marriages to the Home Office under section 24 of the 1999 Act. Some 27 of those reports were sent to enforcement officers for action, and the remaining 21 were unsuitable for being sent on for one reason or another. If a report is lacking some detail or information, for example, officers are asked to contact the registrars before proceeding. I understand that that information may not have been communicated to the Ealing register office, and I shall ensure, among other things, that communication between the immigration offices and register offices is improved. In the short time that I have been in this job, I have met representatives of the registrars to discuss our response to this particular problem. I intend to meet them again, and my officials have been meeting them regularly since that initial meeting.
	For the purposes of clarity, I should point out that a registrar already has the power to stop a ceremony where there is evidence of coercion or threats. It is also my understanding of the law that registrars have limited powers in relation to ceremonies where proper notice has been given and parties are authorised to be married. However, registrars should not allow a marriage notice to be given if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person who wants to give the notice is lying in any of the statements or declarations. It will become apparent that the inadequacy of that power lies behind the changes that we are about to introduce. However, we must be careful, because registrars to whom I have spoken want me to ensure that we do not ask them to become immigration officers. I am sure that the appropriate balance will be struck in the steps that the Government are about to take.
	I have already referred to the duty on registrars under section 24 of the 1999 Act, which has helped the immigration service to build up its intelligence base and to target enforcement efforts on suspected organised attempts to abuse the system. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North gave a colourful example in which the groom was arrested and taken away, and a number of successful operations have been conducted. In 2003, for example, 110 people were arrested at suspected organised sham weddings and 37 people were charged.
	We have also changed the immigration rules with effect from April 2003 to increase the probationary period for marriages. That period occurs after a marriage, and the change stops the practice of switching from short-term leave to stay in the United Kingdom to leave to stay on the grounds of marriage to a UK national. That practice was being used to avoid the more rigorous examination of marriage applications from posts abroad.
	I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing the Marriage with Foreigners Act 1906 to my attention earlier today, because I had an opportunity to examine it, and it appears that it only applies to marriages between British subjects and foreign nationals that take place outside the United Kingdom. He refers to the proposal in the Civil Partnership Bill to provide a certificate of no impediment from this country for a civil partnership between a British subject and a foreign national, and such certificates would also be required were such ceremonies to take place abroad. I will re-examine the 1906 Act, but I doubt whether it is an appropriate vehicle to address the issue.
	It has recently become clear, through the information received from registrars and other intelligence channels, that activity by those seeking to abuse UK marriage laws and enter into sham marriages as a means of circumventing immigration control is on the increase, but it is not easy for the Government to intervene. As my hon. Friend rightly points out, we do want to lay down rules that would make it harder for genuine couples to enter into marriage. Marriage law in this country has evolved over a considerable period of time, and, by and large, the formalities of marriage are currently set out in the law in the way in which people of this country want them to be set out. Any Government that sought to intervene in that area would do so with trepidation, and they would certainly not do it without the widest possible consultation.
	I share my hon. Friend's intention to protect genuine couples, and that intention led us to abolish the primary purpose rule on 5 June 1997. That pernicious rule penalised genuine marriages, divided families and unnecessarily increased the administrative burden on the immigration system. It was imposed in 1980 by the previous Administration, and it forced applicants over one hurdle after another, both at the point of entry clearance and at appeal. It was inherently ineffective and unfair, and did not work to filter out those who sought to cheat the system, but simply punished those who did not. It was abolished not because, as the Conservative Home Affairs spokesman, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), suggested in a statement, it failed to deal with sham marriages, but because of its inequitable treatment of genuine marriages. We will rue the day that we bring it back. We will reflect on the lessons from the primary purpose rule before taking any steps to deal with sham marriages.
	It is clear, though, that where there is abuse we must move to stamp it out. We must ensure that our immigration system is robust in preventing those engaging in sham marriages from bending the rules. There are a number of ways in which we can tighten up the procedures to achieve that without impacting on genuine cases. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in his statement to the House on 22 April, we will shortly bring forward legislation to restrict the capacity to authorise marriage involving non-EEA nationals to designated register offices. I repeat that we are talking about the capacity to authorise marriagesthe Government do not intend to stop marriages being performed in register offices that couples choose, but to direct them to designated offices for authority. That will enable us to focus our enforcement efforts on a more concentrated area, and will allow intelligence and expertise on marriage abuse to be built up in those dedicated centres. We also believethis is its primary purposethat it will have a deterrent effect, because the chances of couples coming into contact with immigration officials will be much higher. That will not be welcome to those who are not genuine, and it will make them much less likely to try.
	We are also looking urgently at what more can be done specifically to address the apparent loophole of third country nationals who marry EEA nationals from other member states, then claim to be exercising treaty rights. We shall make a further announcement on that shortly.
	We are exploring other possibilities, such as the proposal that registrars should have the power to refuse to conduct a marriage that they suspect is being carried out for the purposes of illegal immigration, or where they believe that false documents are being used, until the marriage has been properly investigated by the immigration authorities. However, that would require a fundamental change to marriage law andfor the reasons that I gave, with which I know that my hon. Friend agreesmerits wider consultation.
	We have in hand enhanced enforcement action to target sham marriages, with a view to having a direct impact on the organised criminals who arrange them and seeking prosecutions where appropriate. We are strengthening arrangements for joint working between caseworkers and immigration officers to ensure a better focus on the intelligence that is gathered from registrars and elsewhere. Importantly, we have set up a new joint working group with the Home Office and registrars to share intelligence and ideas and to ensure that our efforts are as focused and effective as possible.
	The Government recognise that, as my hon. Friend was at pains to point out, a marriage is an important event in the lives of the people who are effecting that union in their relationship. It is very important, as he said, that places where that is done should be immune from the sorts of scenes that have unfortunately had to be played out in some register offices in response to information about sham marriages taking place. It is important, too, that we recognise that the informality that has grown up over many decades around the formalities of marriage has generated an opportunity for organised criminals to take advantage of not only that set of circumstances but other people, in order to get round the immigration laws. As my hon. Friend says, significant amounts of money can change hands in relation to the facilitating of such events. That is an indication of the level of organised criminality that is involved.
	The Government are absolutely determined to bring that practice to an end. We intend to make it as difficult as possible, to deter it, and, where it happens, to investigate it and prosecute appropriately. However, we are going to do that in a balanced way that does not interfere with the reasonable expectations of law-abiding people that, subject to checking the appropriateness of their marriage status, they will be able to have their celebratory event as easily and informally as they want to, without interference from the Government.
	The Government will therefore continue to pursue a policy of managed migration to the UK, with procedures in place that will allow us to facilitate that for genuine applicants from whom our society derives real benefits. That includes those who wish to enter into genuine marriages with a UK or EEA national, settle here and contribute. We are absolutely determined that we will also protect the system from abuses in this and other areas. I am confident that the measures outlined will help to protect the institution of marriage within the UK, and help us to maintain appropriate and secure immigration control.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at half-past Six o'clock.